Jonathon McDougall Saved Items (Random Articles)

Cool roofs: Saving trillions

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:05:53.000 GMT

A new study claims white roofs could save billions in energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create carbon credits worth $1 trillion.

The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can’t Have

Jeff — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:02:16.000 GMT

This article is interesting because it again highlights the superior fuel economy of diesel and U.S. regulatory hostility to diesel. It absolutely kills me that I can’t buy a diesel car easily in CA (that Mercedes is only available as a lease option, BTW). This article is also interesting because it highlights the complex financial issues facing companies who manufacture globally as a result of capital investment and currency exchange rates.

The question, of course, is whether the U.S. ever will embrace diesel fuel and allow automakers to achieve sufficient scale to make money on such vehicles. California certified VW and Mercedes diesel cars earlier this year, after a four-year ban. James N. Hall, of auto researcher 293 Analysts, says that bellwether state and the Northeast remain “hostile to diesel.” But the risk to Ford is that the fuel takes off, and the carmaker finds itself playing catch-up—despite having a serious diesel contender in its arsenal.
[From The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can't Have]

iPhone App Downloads to Hit 1 Billion Mark Faster Than Songs Did

Don Reisinger — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:52:47.000 GMT

There may only be over 12 million iPhones in the wild, but that hasn’t stopped iTunes users from downloading more than twice as many apps as songs during the store’s first two months of availability, according to a report.

Steve Jobs said at Apple’s press event last week that users have now downloaded over 100 million apps. Assuming it maintains the same rate of 70 million app downloads it witnessed in August alone, it could hit 1 billion apps by the end of the store’s first year of availability, sometime in 2009. iTunes song downloads didn’t hit the 1 billion mark until its second year of availability.

But in reality, 1 billion downloaded apps could happen much sooner than the middle of next year. As apps become a key selling point for Apple going forward and more iPhones and iPods get out into the wild, more users will find reason to download apps and in turn, increase the download rate.

Apple has yet to comment on the possibility of hitting the 1 billion downloaded apps mark sooner than it sold 1 billion songs, but rest assured that the company’s hype machine will be in full swing as that time nears.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

★ The App Store’s Exclusionary Policies

John Gruber — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:35:30.000 GMT

Fraser Speirs, developer of Exposure, the excellent Flickr client for the iPhone, has written an insightful piece regarding today’s news that Apple rejected the iPhone podcast client Podcaster on the grounds that “since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes”. Speirs writes:

Apple’s current practice of rejecting certain applications at the final hurdle — submission to the App Store — is disastrous for investor confidence. Developers are investing time and resources in the App Store marketplace and, if developers aren’t confident, they won’t invest in it. If developers — and serious developers at that — don’t invest, what’s the point?

You have to wonder if Apple wants the App Store to be a museum of poorly-designed nibware written by dilettante Mac OS X/iPhone OS switcher-developers and hobbyist students. That’s what will happen if companies who intend to invest serious resources in bringing an original idea to the App Store are denied a reasonable level of confidence in their expectation of profit.

Exactly right. If you only find out at the end of the development process that your app has been rejected — not for a technical problem that you can address but because Apple deems the entire concept to be out of bounds — then who is going to put serious time and talent into an iPhone app?

If there were other means of distributing iPhone apps — to put it in Paul Kafasis’s terms, if Apple’s were an App Store rather than the App Store — then it would be acceptable for Apple’s store to be exclusionary. But so long as it remains the sole means of distributing iPhone apps, then the policy for determining which apps get in must be inclusive, rather than exclusive, at least if there is to be a robust, innovative developer community for the iPhone like there exists for the Mac. An iPhone where you can’t compete against Apple’s own apps, or even where you can’t make fart jokes, isn’t much better than last year’s SDK-less iPhone but with games and to-do list apps.

Let’s be clear: forbidding “duplication of functionality” is forbidding competition. The point of competition is to do the same thing, but better. Worse, Apple hasn’t even said which functionality is off-limits. I’m not arguing about what’s legally or morally right in some abstract sense. I’m talking about common sense — talented developers are looking at what is going on with the App Store and choosing not to write iPhone apps, out of the fear that their efforts will be for naught. If good developers are afraid to write software for your platform, it is a problem.

The App Store concept has trade-offs. There are pros and cons to this model versus the wide-open nature of Mac OS X. There are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides. But blatantly anti-competitive exclusion of apps that compete with Apple’s own? There is no trade-off here. No one benefits from such a policy, not even Apple. If this is truly Apple’s policy, it’s a disaster for the platform. And if it’s not Apple’s policy, then Podcaster’s exclusion is proof that the approval process is completely broken.

Either way, something is seriously wrong.

App disqualified from App Store because it 'duplicates iTunes functionality' (updated)

Robert Palmer — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 01:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Developer, App Store

An iPhone developer who created an app that manages and plays podcasts says the app was disqualified from the App Store because "it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes." That's right, iTunes for the desktop.

This opens up unsettling possibilities for other developers. There are many applications that duplicate the functionality of Apple software for both the desktop and mobile devices. For instance, there are many calculators that duplicate the functionality of Calculator. Twitterrific has a small browser built in, duplicating the functionality of Safari. NetNewsWire duplicates some RSS reading functionality in Mail for Mac OS X.

There's a well-defined slippery slope here. While Apple is within its rights to accept or reject any app into the App Store for whatever reasons it sees fit, its communication with the developer community leaves a lot to be desired. (We talked a little about this on last Sunday's Talkcast.) Even though the developer says he followed all the rules, there's still a chance that an app will simply fall ill of Apple's fickle fancy.

Will this latest move by Apple chill relations with developers? Or are the upsides still too great to ignore? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment.

Update: And commenters think I'm overreacting: Frasier Speirs, developer of Exposure, isn't writing any more iPhone apps because of this whole mummalum. [Via Metafilter.]

Thanks, Mike!

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The Worst Case Scenario Extrapolating From the iTunes App Store, Fully-Expressed in the Form of a Single Tweet by Steven Frank

John Gruber — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:35:17.000 GMT

This is where it leads.

★

Conference Room Fail

failblog — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:01:01.000 GMT

Submitted by cgiven

WebMessenger (iPhone Jabber etc. client)

Brent Simmons — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:59:32.000 GMT

Better Elevation: “Another offering in the field of multi-protocol IM clients for the iPhone: Callwave’s WebMessenger. This one skews slightly corporate, with support for AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Skype, Google Talk, Jabber, and Reuters networks.”

holy mother of god they're nuts

Michael Sippey — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:26:35.000 GMT

This ranks as one of the craziest videos I've ever seen.

Some of the commenters aren't fans of the couple minute preamble of them suiting up in powder blue and heading to the top of the hill, but I think it's perfect -- it adds a nice sense of ritual to the insanity of what they're doing.

The road they're on is a few miles from where I live -- it's Claremont Avenue, and hey start at the top of the hill at the corner of Claremont and Grizzly Peak Boulevard, and then head straight down to Russell Avenue; that's the Claremont Hotel they zoom past right near the end of both runs.

Here's the Google topo map of the route...

It's absolutely nuts to do that on a skateboard.

Listening to the loud people

Seth Godin — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:52:44.000 GMT

Of course you should listen to your customers.

But which ones?

Should you listen to the loud ones, the ones who call the sports radio stations to complain about the pitching, the ones who post websites about your lousy service, the ones who organize nationwide boycotts? Should you listen to the angry ones, the ones with a limited vocabulary (heavy on profanity, short on spelling) who know how to use email and aren't afraid to use it?

Or, should you listen to the customers that are the most profitable, the most loyal or the most likely to spread word of mouth among the people you want to become your customers?

Here are three common listening mistakes:

Believing that your customers are monolithic, that they all want the same thing.
Believing that loud customers speak for all customers.
Worrying that if you don't satisfy short-term, loudly articulated needs, you will fail.

There's an art here, it's not a science. I'd focus on a few tactics:

When someone is in pain, recognize it and address it if you can.
You decide, not your customers, where you want to go. Lead, don't follow.
Amplify the voices of the people you care about, those with the most value to you in the long run. Give them a platform and make it easier for them to speak to you and the rest of the market.

And here's one thing I'd do on a regular basis: Get a video camera or perhaps a copy machine and collect comments and feedback from the people who matter most to your business. Then show those comments to the boss and to your staff and to other customers. Do it regularly. The feedback you expose is the feedback you'll take to heart.

Second Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates Spot for Microsoft

John Gruber — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:55:54.000 GMT

I don’t get it.

(Via MacDailyNews.)

★

Unearthing the cause of the iTunes 8 crash

Ed Bott — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:18:28.000 GMT

Oh my. Were you wondering how iTunes turned into an 80MB download? Looks like Apple’s installing a bunch of kernel-mode drivers and services and some unwanted applications with its iTunes 8 upgrade. Without any disclosure or consent.

And one of those drivers is one that’s been causing BSODs with Windows for as long as I can remember. Nice marketing strategy: Tweak Microsoft for an operating system that crashes, then ship code that crashes Windows. Thank goodness I’m not a cynic or I’d think this was a deliberate marketing strategy.

Details over at ZDNet. (And don’t miss the screenshot gallery.)

Update: A commenter over at ZDNet came up with the best one-liner I’ve heard yet:

iTunes ain’t done till Windows won’t run!

Damn, wish I’d thought of that.

Mac 101: Using your Windows keyboard

Robert Palmer — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:30:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Switchers, Mac 101

If you switch frequently between a Mac and a PC, chances are you have to deal with a Windows keyboard from time to time. Thankfully, this can be easy with third-party utilities, or even features already built in to Mac OS X.

For most switchers, the hardest part about learning to use a new Mac is dealing with your muscle memory. For example, if you're really used to typing Control + C to copy something, Command + C means using your thumb instead of your pinky to perform the operation.

In System Preferences, you can click Keyboard and Mouse to change how your modifier keys (that is, Control, Command, Option and Caps Lock) work. Click the Keyboard tab, and then click the Modifier Keys button at the bottom of the window. You can map the Control key to the Command key (and vice versa, if you prefer) to help ease you in to Mac key commands.

Continue reading Mac 101: Using your Windows keyboard

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Obama on Letterman

John Gruber — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:25:25.000 GMT

Obama was funny, and Letterman once again proved to be a better interviewer than those in TV news.

★

Terminal Tips: Change your current screenshot format

Cory Bohon — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:30:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Terminal Tips

Do you like using the built-in Mac OS X screenshot utility but dislike the format of the output file? With this simple Terminal hack, you can easily change the file format of the image. Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities) and type the following command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

You can replace "jpg" with your desired file format (example: tiff, pdf, png, etc.). If you wish to change it back to defaults, Mac OS X originally grabs screens in png format. To activate the changes, just logout of your account and then log back in.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.

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History of the Browser User-Agent String

John Gruber — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:36:12.000 GMT

What a mess.

★

Add cowbell and Christopher Walken to any song

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:03:00.000 GMT

MoreCowbell.dj is a little Flash app that takes in any MP3, analyses it, and adds rhythmic cowbell and Christopher Walken samples, thus vastly improving it. More Cowbell.dj (via Waxy)

Poe's "The Raven," translated into 50s hipster argot

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:50:34.000 GMT

One of the reasons we called our daughter "Poesy" was so that we could shorten her name to "Poe," as in "Edgar Allen," and since the early days, we've recited bits of The Raven and others to her (I like saying "The Bells" while I'm trying to get her to sleep). One of my favorite Poe adaptations is jazz poet Lord Buckley's "The Bugbird," a too-awesome-to-be-believed translation into the "semantic of the hip," circa 1950. It's really fun to recite and the kid LOVES it.

It was a real drug midnight
swoooooooooooooooah dreary
I was goofing
Beat and weary
Over many a freakish volume of forgotten score
When suddenly there came a tapping
As if some cat were gently riffing
Knocking rhythm at my pad's door.
Ah, "'tis the landlady," I muttered
On her broom she flies the rounding
Sounding for her rent
WITCH only this and nothing more
Ehh, ooh, will I ever get out of this feeling?
Emmm, emmmm,
Ah, so solid I remember,
It was in that wrought December
And it's swingin', jumpin' ember
Blew it's phantom upon the floor
Groovily I woo'd the morrow
Still hung I sought to borrow
From my book kicks
To knock the sorrow
Sorrow for my gone Lenore
For that sweet, square but swingin' maiden
Whom the fly chicks tagged Lenore
Nameless here forevermore

The Bugbird ("The Raven"), A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat (CD)

NewsGator's NetNewsWire Highly Rated Product Awarded 5/5 "Mice" by MacWorld

Josh Larson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:33:35.000 GMT

Though not explicitly related to widgets, I wanted to point out the fact that MacWorld has reviewed NewsGator's NetNewsWire RSS Feed Reader (created by our own Brent Simmons); you can view it here.

We're excited about the fact that MacWorld awarded NetNewsWire the highest possible score -- 5/5 "mice." They cited, in specific, its great interface, ability to handle hundreds of subscriptions with ease, useful feed-organization, clippings feature, sync capabilities -- among others -- as highlights of the product.

NetNewsWire is also available as a handy, free application for iPhone users -- allowing you to sync your feeds across multiple platforms. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this in the near future. Stay tuned.

Adam Savage inhales sulphur hexafluoride

Mark Frauenfelder — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:32:41.000 GMT

Inhaling sulphur hexafluoride allows you to channel Penn Jillette, apparently. (via Arbroath)

First look: GOG revives classic PC games for download age

fcaron@arstechnica.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:30:00.000 GMT

A new online gaming store called Good Old Games is poised to do huge business on the digital distribution front with a solid library of classic PC games for sale at low prices, and without any DRM. Get a first look at the service, currently in beta.

Mac 101: Search Wikipedia from your desktop

Cory Bohon — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Mac 101

When Apple made the move from Tiger to Leopard, they decided to throw in more than a few features. One of those new features was the ability to search Wikipedia right from Dictionary.

To start searching Wikipedia, just open Dictionary (located in /Applications). Next, click on the Wikipedia button and enter a search term. Leopard will then browse Wikipedia for the answer.

You can access the dictionary from most applications by highlighting a word, right-clicking and selecting "Look Up in Dictionary."

Want more tips like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

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How Videogames Blind Us With Science

John Gruber — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:32:41.000 GMT

Clive Thompson, on kids using the scientific method to get better at video games:

One of the reasons kids get bored by science is that too many teachers present it as a fusty collection of facts for memorization. This is precisely wrong. Science isn’t about facts. It’s about the quest for facts — the scientific method, the process by which we hash through confusing thickets of ignorance. It’s dynamic, argumentative, collaborative, competitive, filled with flashes of crazy excitement and hours of drudgework, and driven by ego: Our desire to be the one who figures it out, at least for now. It’s dramatic and nutty and fun.

(Via Tim O’Reilly.)

★

A visit to Casa Bonita restaurant in Denver

Mark Frauenfelder — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:54:14.000 GMT

I remember watching the television commercials announcing the opening of Casa Bonita in 1973. The Mexican restaurant looked like a piece of Disneyland that had been scooped up and dropped onto the blighted Denver suburb of Lakewood, Colorado. The exterior featured pink fantasy Spanish mission architecture, and the interior contained a Mexican village, a mariachi band, a haunted cave, a waterfall and pond with cliff divers, fire jugglers, a Ske-Ball arcade, puppet and magic shows, costumed gorillas, and an all-you-can eat buffet. I begged my parents to take us there.

Even the rumors that Casa Bonita put dog food in its dishes -- rumors so virulent and pervasive that Casa Bonita had to buy airtime on local TV to assure people that it most assuredly did not use dog food -- did nothing to dissuade my desire to visit.

My parents eventually gave in. We drove to the restaurant, waited in a long, winding line (just like a line for a Disney attraction), took our food platters as they appeared from a slot, and were led by a waiter dressed in cartoonish Mexican garb to a table near the diving pool. It felt like we were sitting in a jungle, with twinkling stars overheard and a sleepy little Mexican town peeking through palm trees.

I don't remember many other details from that night. I do recall I thought it was wonderful, and I wanted to return as soon as possible.

And 35 short years later, I came back. My daughter was turning 11, and we wanted to celebrate. Since we were in Colorado on vacation, I suggested Casa Bonita. I described it to my daughter and she said it sounded like fun.

We went there in the middle of the week, driving from Boulder. The first thing I noticed as we got near the shopping mall where Casa Bonita was located was the large number of pawn shops, payday advance stores and check-cashing joints. Even the mall itself had a payday loan business. (Click images for full-size.)

The magic store next door to Casa Bonita is like one of those businesses next to Disneyland that tries to drink from the theme park's milkshake. Kids who enjoyed the magic show at Casa Bonita no doubt dragged their parents into this place to get Chinese linking rings, balls-and-cups, and hollow thumbs.

This rainbow-haired, leprous clown in the window of the magic store caught my eye. How long has it been there? Years? Decades?

This sign near the entrance to Casa Bonita promises a wonderful time for all. (Note the claim that there's no cover charge. However, the sign is really saying that all people over the age of two must purchase a meal.)

Once inside, I was surprised to discover that the place was nearly deserted. I saw about three other occupied tables in a restaurant that was built to hold hundreds of people. I was expecting lively music, but it was eerily silent, adding to the feeling of abandonment. The cashier was sitting on the floor, reading a book. She reluctantly got up, unhooked a chain blocking our entry, and took our order.

Here's a photo of my platter (Chicken Deluxe Dinner) emanating from the aforementioned slot in the wall. The people working here seemed to want to hide from the patrons.

Here's a close-up of my platter. Think it looks bad? You should try eating it. My wife could only eat one bite of her meal.

The view from our table.

The gift store. We were the only ones there, besides the cashier.

The Skee-Ball arcade. Again, we were the only ones there, besides the cashier, who accepted our 500 Skee-Ball tickets in exchange for a Spider Man eraser.

Apparently, you will die horribly if you insert your Skee-Ball tickets into the ticket-tabulator upside down. It must have been manufactured by Diebold.

The highlight of our visit was the Fanky Malloon machine. The promise of a "Flying Fun Balloon" for 75-cents was too good to pass up. We bought a Fanky Malloon for each of the three kids in our group. I took a video of the machine in action:

On the way out, I asked my 11-year-old if Casa Bonita was as wonderful as I'd promised it would be. She said it was even better. Maybe we'll come back in another 35 years.

80% of artists would get <€30/year from copyright extension

nate@arstechnica.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:45:00.000 GMT

If the reason for extending EU musical copyrights another 45 years is to help poor musicians in their old age, then the plan is a failure, says the UK's Open Rights Group. In fact, only the most successful musicians will see more than €30 a year, while the labels could make millions of euros per year.

TUAW Tip: Regular Expressions for Beginners

Robert Palmer — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: TUAW Tips

Sometimes I think Regular Expressions are like the tax code: if someone professes to know everything about them, they're probably not telling the truth. In reality, Regular Expressions (or RegEx) is a syntax to help you construct very precise search terms to find and replace bits of text in a variety of applications.

In applications like Coda, BBEdit, and TextMate, you can search for a "string" -- meaning just any old collection of letters next to each other -- using a Regular Expression. For example, I could search for the string "laugh" and it would show up in laughter, slaughter, and Laughlin.

While I can't show you everything about Regular Expressions, I can at least start you off. Keep reading for more about how you can integrate Regular Expressions into your workflow.

Continue reading TUAW Tip: Regular Expressions for Beginners

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Microsoft Gurus are not Apple Geniuses

Steven Sande — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple

According to a Friday article on Yahoo! Finance, Microsoft is introducing "Microsoft Gurus" at Best Buy and Circuit City stores nationwide. They plan on having 155 Gurus deployed by year-end, and will expand the program based on its success.

While it may seem like this is copying Apple's Genius program, it's not. The Geniuses hang out at the Genius Bar in the local Apple Store, helping new Mac owners migrate data or resolve problems, fixing iPod and iPhone issues, and otherwise giving the customer help when they really need it -- after they've committed money to a product and can't get something to work properly.

In contrast, the Microsoft Guru program is only concerned with pre-sales questions. Gurus provide demos of how Microsoft applications work together, as well as answer questions about PCs in general and Windows in particular. This is reminiscent of Microsoft's previous attempts at having in-store sales reps, particularly in 2004 and 2005 when the company had contract staff at stores to push the ever-popular MSN Direct Smart Watches. You say you've never heard of MSN Direct or Smart Watches? That should give you an idea of how successful that pre-sales program was!

What do you think about the Microsoft Gurus? Leave a comment and/or take our poll.

View Poll

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The three kinds of FREE

Chris Anderson — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:26:56.000 GMT

One of the themes of the book is untangling the confusion over different kinds of free,which can range from a simple marketing gimmick to a radically new economic model. I've taken a quick pass at doing this visually, but we'll really have to pretty these diagrams up (perhaps with cute restroom-style figures for the various parties, rather than the Ps and Cs below?)

Here's the first, which dates back more than a century. It's the razors-and-blades model, as well as loss leaders of all sorts, from "free gift inside" to "free toaster for opening an account":

The second is the media business model, ranging from free-to-air broadcast radio and television to all ad-supported content online today:

The third is the new one, enabled by digital markets where the marginal cost of production and distribution is close to zero. This is the one that allows the "freemium" business model, where 90% of the users get the basic product for free and 10% chose to pay for a premium version. In economics this is called "versioning" and is a form of using price discrimination (where the main price is zero) to maximize both the consumer utility and the profit in a market. In this model, charging a small percentage of a large user base beats charging a large percentage of a small user base. Obviously best for consumer products with potentially large appeal, it's the main Web 2.0 business model and can be found everywhere from Flickr and Flickr Pro to open source's "support included" commercial versions of Linux.

Any ideas on how to improve these or otherwise present them more clearly and engagingly in the book?

Hulu vs. Amazon: Amazon Never Stood A Chance

Don Reisinger — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:31:05.000 GMT

Since Amazon released its video on demand service earlier today, I’ve pored over each and every section of the site to determine if it has what it takes to supplant Hulu as the best online video service providing professional network content. And after doing just that, I’ve quickly realized that it doesn’t.

Amazon has done all it can to solidify its stance in the online video market. First, it launched its Unbox service to compete with film streaming and now it has tried to compete in on-demand streaming of TV shows and movies. And by making TV shows and movies available online to be streamed directly to your computer, it’s quickly becoming apparent that Amazon is not necessarily focusing all its attention on iTunes, but on what it perceives to be the next frontier in video: online streaming.

Selection

Amazon is quick to point out that the videos it offers on its new service don’t have ads breaking into the flow of the shows. But that is because you have to pay $1.99 for each TV episode. Granted, Amazon’s VOD service does have some free shows — I watched 30 Rock a few times — but the list of free shows is laughable, compared to the sheer number of paid shows.

So is it even fair to compare a paid service to a free one? Sure it is. Right now, for instance, Hulu is offering five episodes of The Office for free on its site with just a handful of commercials in each. I tried playing those same shows on Amazon to see if I could stream them for free on its service and was presented with a banner telling me I needed to buy the show after just 2 minutes of viewing.

If you’re fine with paying for TV shows, you’ll be happy to know that Amazon’s offering has quite a few — it claims it has over 40,000 movies and TV shows available. In fact, practically every episode from each season of every show in Amazon’s VOD service is available for purchase. I was pleased to see that I could choose from a slew of networks like TV Land and NBC. So Amazon lives up to its name in terms of breadth of selection. But there was something frustrating about the fact that so few shows had a free stream available, given all the free TV to be found on the Web.

Experience

Overall, the Amazon VOD experience is quite similar to Hulu: you pick a network from the links on the left column, choose your show, and find your episode. The picture quality of the videos I watched were highly-detailed and I was pleasantly surprised by Amazon’s decision to offer such a large display instead of the somewhat smaller screens found on Hulu.

That said, the actual video playback was suspect at times and the video streams would skip too often. That may be the result of all the attention Amazon’s VOD is receiving today, but so far, I haven’t seen any improvements. I also didn’t like that the video playback screens were too cluttered with extras. The pages feature all the episodes below the video. And Amazon’s ubiquitous recommendation engine picks underneath only muddies an otherwise clean screen.

Are no commercials worth it?

The main selling points of Amazon’s Video On Demand service are that it doesn’t have commercials, it has a slew of shows available and the picture quality is superb.But the streaming is choppy, the site layout is suspect, and some of the same content is available elsewhere for free.

Even though Hulu commercials can annoy me when I’m excited to see what happens next on The Office, I’ve never realized until now just how much I prefer them to shelling outcash for what is often a hit-or-miss experience. I don’t mind paying for a show I enjoy, but $1.99 seems a bit steep for one episode and if it’s being played for free on Hulu, I’m not sure why I would even consider using Amazon’s service.

CrunchBase Information

Amazon

Netflix

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Why isn't the "real news" as thorough as Jon Stewart?

Charlie Wood — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:41:29.000 GMT

Flickr Find: Mac OS 10.0 UI

Dave Caolo — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: OS, Apple History

Reader and Flickr user ismh has posted a series of screenshots of Mac OS 10.0 to our Flickr pool. It was just seven years ago -- March of 2001 -- that Mac OS 10.0 was released to the waiting masses. I distinctly remember driving to my local authorized retailer to buy a copy, and then quickly rushing home to install it on my 333mhz G3 iMac.

What I apparently fogot was how different the UI was. Remember the pinstripes? How about Sherlock? And don't miss the list of supported hardware, including the iBook, the PowerBook G3, The Power Macintosh G3 and the good 'ol Power Mac G4.

I also remember slower-than-molasses performance and aqua lozenge buttons everywhere. Oh, Mac OS X. How you've changed.

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C’mon Bitch, Sue Me!

Jeff — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:15:26.000 GMT

Brilliant. It is flabbergasting that the State of California asserts copyright over material that is the fruit of public taxpayer dollars… and on top of that, is information that represents required knowledge for select segments of the market. This is an interesting article about a guy that has a lot of support behind his activities.

California’s building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws can be found online.

But if you want to download and save those laws to your computer, forget it.

The state claims copyright to those laws. It dictates how you can access and distribute them — and therefore how much you’ll have to pay for print or digital copies.
[From He’s giving you access, one document at a time | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA]

Twelve unnecessary Vista features to disable

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:14:06.000 GMT

Vista, thy name is bloat! The latest Windows packs a lot of code -- more than any version of Windows ever -- and some of it is just plain unnecessary. All of that excess code has a way of slowing down an operating system. You can regain some PC performance by removing unneeded features.

I've identified a dozen Vista features that you can turn off right now. Some are shiny baubles that slow down graphics performance, while others are optional utilities that hog memory when they shouldn't. A few can actually be quite useful, though they play a major role in bogging down your PC.

[ Get the analysis and insights that only Randall C. Kennedy can provide on PC tech in InfoWorld's Enterprise Desktop blog. And download our free Windows performance-monitoring tool. ]

Should you really turn off all of the following features right this minute? That depends on your computer, your work habits, and your tastes. (I've turned off only seven and a half on my PC, because while none of these features are required for Vista to function, some are still kind of nice and my computer is fast enough to handle them.)

Just to be on the safe side, make sure to create a restore point before you turn any of the items off. That way you can quickly return your machine to its present state should you decide that you don't like the change. To make a restore point, click Start, type sysdm.cpl, and press Enter. Choose System Protection, Create, and then follow the prompts.

I list the features in the order that would make them easiest to turn off. For instance, I've put features that you can remove in the same dialog box next to each other.

Sidebar
You pay a heavy performance price for the analog clock, thumbnail slide-show viewer, and Microsoft-centric RSS news feed that dock in the Windows Sidebar. Turning the whole thing off gives you a big speed boost, especially at boot time.

To remove the Sidebar, right-click anywhere on the Sidebar and select Close Sidebar. Uncheck Start Sidebar when Windows starts, and then click OK.

Aero
Microsoft put a lot of Vista's visual enhancements under one technological and marketing umbrella: Aero. Among those features are the thumbnails of your windows that appear when you hover the mouse pointer over the taskbar, as well as the Flip 3D view you get by pressing Windows-Tab. Aero adds a little practicality and a lot of panache to the Vista user interface, and personally, I like it.

If your PC is underpowered or overloaded, however, Aero may be more trouble than it's worth. To turn it off, right-click the Windows desktop and select Personalize, Window Color and Appearance. In the resulting "Window Color and Appearance" dialog box, click Open classic appearance properties for more color options (if you don't see the option, that means Aero is already turned off). Select Windows Vista Basic and click OK.

Assorted Interface Beautification Options
You can save some additional clock cycles by turning off all or some of Vista's pretty interface options, not all of which are directly connected to Aero.

To see the options, click Start, right-click Computer, and select Properties. Click the Advanced System Properties link, the Advanced tab, and then the Settings button inside the Performance box.

You can uncheck all of the listed options by selecting Adjust for best performance, or you can simply uncheck the ones you don't care for. I unchecked Fade or slide menus into view, Fade or slide ToolTips into view, Show shadows under menus, and Slide open combo boxes. The rest I left on.

Remote Assistance
Don't worry about turning this item off if you run Vista Home (Basic or Premium). You don't have it. If you run Vista Business or Ultimate, though, you can use Remote Assistance to control one PC from another--a useful tool if you regularly provide tech support for a relative living far away.

On the other hand, if you're not providing long-distance support, or if you prefer a third-party remote-control program, Remote Assistance is just a waste of resources. To get rid of it, click Start, right-click Computer, and select Properties. Click Remote Settings. Uncheck Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer.

Internet Printing Client
Do you ever print documents over the Internet? Neither do I. Chances are, you won't miss out on anything by disabling Vista's Internet Printing Client.

Open the "Programs and Features" control panel and click the Turn Windows features on or off link on the left; you'll get the Windows Features dialog box. Expand the Print Services section and uncheck Internet Printing Client.

Click OK at this point, and then wait several more minutes for the system to ask to reboot. Or you can move to the next page and read the next three items in this article, which also use this dialog box.

Windows Meeting Space
I like Windows' built-in peer-to-peer collaboration program, Meeting Space, which lets you share files across a network while editing them with a remote colleague. But I don't have any use for it in my daily life, and neither do most of the people I know.

So I shut Windows Meeting Space off. You can, too. Simply uncheck Windows Meeting Space while you're in the Windows Features dialog box. If you're not in the Windows Features dialog box, see the tip on the previous page for instructions on getting to it.

Windows Ultimate Extras
One of the best things you can do exclusively in Vista Ultimate Edition is turn off the really pointless features that are found exclusively in Vista Ultimate Edition. I refer, of course, to Ultimate Extras, a set of downloadable add-ons available only to Ultimate users. If you didn't pay for the most expensive version of Vista, these useless add-ons aren't a concern.

If you do own Ultimate, go to Windows Update (Start, All Programs, Windows Update), click View available updates, and check out all the worthless stuff Microsoft has made available exclusively to people who paid through the nose for the most bloated version of Vista.

As of this writing, the extras include a poker game, some BitLocker and EFS enhancements that hardly anyone uses, several sound schemes, and an odd tool called Windows DreamScene that lets you waste your precious system resources by using video as your wallpaper. If PC World ever asks me to write an article on pointless ways to slow down Vista, I'll start with DreamScene.

You can turn Windows Ultimate Extras off in the Windows Features control panel by clicking Turn Windows features on or off to open the Windows Features dialog box, and then unchecking Windows Ultimate Extras.

Tablet PC Stuff
I own a tablet PC, and I love Vista's tablet-oriented features -- especially the Input Panel for writing with the stylus. But if you don't have a tablet, these features are useless to you.

Turning off Vista's tablet features is a two-step process: Start in the Windows Features dialog box. If you're not already there, see the tip on the previous page for instructions on getting to it. Once there, simply uncheck Tablet PC Optional Components.

You complete the job in the Services window, which you open by clicking Start, typing services, and pressing Enter. Find and double-click Tablet PC Input Services. In the "Startup type" drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

ReadyBoost
If you're not using this much-hyped Vista feature--which supposedly speeds up Vista by caching memory to a flash drive -- it's actually slowing your system down a tiny bit. (And if you are using ReadyBoost, it's probably still a drag on your PC. For an explanation, read "ReadyBoost Flash Drives Lack Significant Boost.")

You turn off ReadyBoost in Services. If you aren't already there, click Start, type services, and press Enter. Find and double-click ReadyBoost. In the "Startup type" drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

Search Indexing
This one is a real trade-off. Turning off Vista's indexing will slow searches to a crawl -- I'm talking minutes, not seconds. But ditching this convenient feature could very likely speed up your general PC use significantly.

In other words, turning off indexing will help your PC's performance only if you seldom search by file content, or if you use a third-party search tool such as Copernic Desktop or Google Desktop (in which case you probably have two indexing routines running at the same time, which is an even bigger waste).

If you match either of those descriptions, turn off indexing by clicking Start, typing services, and pressing Enter. Find and double-click Windows Search. In the "Startup type" drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

Offline Files
If you work on files stored on a server somewhere, and you can't depend on that server always being available, Vista Business and Ultimate's Offline Files feature makes your life easier by copying the files to your hard drive and keeping them synced.

Of course, that sort of thing isn't for everybody, which is probably why Microsoft didn't include Offline Files in the Home editions of Vista. But if you have Business or Ultimate and still don't need Offline Files, turn it off by clicking Start, typing services, and pressing Enter. Find and double-click Offline Files. In the "Startup type" drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

Windows Error Reporting Service
Every time Windows experiences an error -- either with its own processes or with a third-party program -- it offers to report the problem to Microsoft. In theory, doing so can help the company locate problems with its OS (and heaven knows that would be a good thing). But more than likely, your report will either go unresolved or just end up in a big ol' pile of other people's reports on the same problem. Either way, you're wasting your system's precious resources on a feature that isn't doing you any good.

To disable this unhelpful service, open the Services window: Click Start, type services, and press Enter. Find and double-click Windows Error Reporting Service. In the "Startup type" drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

UAC: Boon or Bloat?
One of Windows Vista's most controversial new features is User Account Control (UAC), which attempts to protect your system from malware by forcing you to authorize certain system-altering actions by clicking through a dialog box from time to time. To some people, this feature is an unwanted annoyance that must be eliminated. Other users appreciate the added security. While I wouldn't go so far as to lump UAC in with the other wasteful features in this article, I can certainly understand why some folks would like to turn it off -- or at least minimize its intrusive behavior. For tips on taming UAC, see Scott Dunn's excellent article "Annoyance Buster: Make Vista's User Account Control Work for You."

PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Apple Rejects Fart-Joke iPhone App

John Gruber — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:22:57.000 GMT

MacRumors has a story on Pull My Finger, an iPhone App that plays a variety of fart sounds. The demo video shows that the app is clearly well done for what it is — it even vibrates the phone while it toots — but Apple rejected it:

We’ve reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store.

With all the absolute crap that has made it into the store, which includes apps based on nothing more than sample code from Apple’s SDK, it seems ridiculous for Pull My Finger to be rejected on these grounds. The current number one app in the store is Koi Pond, which is utterly useless but extremely well-done.

I’ve already heard from a top-tier developer this morning who, in response to this story, is dropping an idea for a very cool iPhone app out of fear that the work to create it would be for naught as Apple might reject it.

★

Penn Jillette: U.S. doesn't need a great leader

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:15:12.000 GMT

Everyone I talk to seems to think the president of the United States right now is stupid.

Rage Against the Machine go a capella at RNC protest after cops shut down PA

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:43:37.000 GMT

When the police shut down the PA on Rage Against the Machine at an anti-RNC concert, the band took to the turf with a megaphone and performed a capella, delivering inspiring commentary between songs. This is must-see youtube -- some of the most heartening protest footage I've seen in years. Rage Against the Machine RNC - 09.02.08 (Performs Acapella in Crowd) (Thanks, Shahryarrakeen!)

Update: Xopl adds, "Rage Against the Machine had a scheduled legal concert in the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis tonight. Police and media where sitting and waiting outside during the whole concert in heavy numbers just waiting for something to happen when the show got out. The police got what they wanted. Police pepper spraying going on right now." Twitter 1, Twitter 2

HOWTO Create perfect fake identities

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:22:06.000 GMT

In his latest Wired column, Bruce Schneier runs the thought-experiment of creating perfect identities. I noodled with this when my daughter was born -- I got her birth certificate from the Hackney Council, a sheet of ordinary laser-printed A4, took it to the Canadian embassy with a couple of photos that could have been any baby, and a few weeks later, a Canadian passport arrived. I thought, hmm, what if I were do to this again next year, but this time with my own laser-printed "certificate?" I could make a new identity for Poesy to step into in 20 years when she tires of her existing database shadow.

Imagine you're in charge of infiltrating sleeper agents into the United States. The year is 1983, and the proliferation of identity databases is making it increasingly difficult to create fake credentials. Ten years ago, someone could have just shown up in the country and gotten a driver's license, Social Security card and bank account -- possibly using the identity of someone roughly the same age who died as a young child -- but it's getting harder. And you know that trend will only continue. So you decide to grow your own identities.
Call it "identity farming." You invent a handful of infants. You apply for Social Security numbers for them. Eventually, you open bank accounts for them, file tax returns for them, register them to vote, and apply for credit cards in their name. And now, 25 years later, you have a handful of identities ready and waiting for some real people to step into them.

How to Create the Perfect Fake Identity

Enable Chrome's Best Features in Firefox [Firefox]

Adam Pash — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:55:00.000 GMT

The internet is atwitter with Google Chrome's innovative new features, but there was no clear winner in our speed test comparing Firefox and Chrome—which means your choice of browser may depend solely on features. Apart from a few specific issues (namely process management), many of Chrome's best features are already available in Firefox 3, proving yet again the power of extensibility. From incognito browsing and the streamlined download manager to URL highlighting and improved search, let's take a look at how you can bring some of Google Chrome's best features to Firefox.

Stealther Turns On Incognito Browsing

Chrome's Incognito browsing allows you to ~~shop for your significant other~~ look at porn without keeping any history of that browsing session anywhere on your computer. In Firefox, the Stealther extension does the same thing. The main difference: In Chome, a single window can enter Incognito mode, whereas in Firefox it's enabled globally (this is probably possible in Chrome because of how it manages each tab as a separate process). But let's be honest, are your multi-tasking skills really that good? (Original post)

Download Statusbar Puts Downloads in Your Status Bar (Surprise!)

Chrome is all about saving space, so files you download don't break out into a separate window. Instead, they live in your status bar. Not bad, but guess what: The Download Statusbar Firefox extension has been doing this for five years, and it offers lots of additional options and wastes even less screen real estate. (Original post)

Speed Dial and Auto Dial Power Up Your Empty Tabs

Chrome's empty tab page—which displays your most visited sites, most used search boxes, and even your recently closed tabs—is awesome. There isn't currently anything quite as full featured for Firefox, however there are a couple of options that are very close. The Speed Dial extension (which itself is a ripoff of the Speed Dial feature in Opera) provides a very similar thumbnail-based new tab page, but you decide which sites you want in your speed dial and you can quickly access any of them from your keyboard with shortcuts. (Original post)

Locationbar2 Adds Domain-Highlighting to the Address Bar

Google Chrome's "omni bar" sports root domain highlighting, a cool feature that doubles as a nice anti-phishing device (if you see the root domain more easily, you are less likely to give your information to an imposter domain). That sort of domain highlighting isn't new by any means, though; the Locationbar2 Firefox extension has been boasting this same highlighting—in addition to several other excellent features—for well over a year.

Prism Extension Turns Any Site into a Separate Application

If you want to break out a webapp you use all day long into a separate window and desktop shortcut, Chrome makes it easy on you. Just click x and do y. The concept of separating webapps into their own application isn't new by any means, though. At Mozilla, they've been cooking up Prism to do just that for quite some time. With Prism and the Prism for Firefox extension installed, just go to Tools -> Convert Website to Application to do break an webapp into a separate window and application. Right now this extension is Windows only, but hey—so is Chrome.

Keyword Search Bookmarks Integrate Site-Specific Search with the Address Bar

Chrome boasts that after using a site's search engine once, you can perform that same search from the address bar next time. For example, after you search Amazon once, the next time you may just be able to go to your address bar, type 'a', press Tab, and then perform your search. That's pretty saucy, but it's also not much of an innovation over keyword searches in Firefox. Granted, you have to manually add a search box (here are 15 of our favorite Firefox quick searches), but you can also define exactly what you want that shortcut to be. Chome also doesn't currently support keyword bookmarking in general, which is one of the most time-saving features in Firefox.

On the other hand, previously mentioned Auto Dial automatically populates the new tab page with your most frequently visited sites. It's not as attractive as Speed Dial or Chrome's new tab page, though. Either way, give Firefox extension developers some time. We'll have an even better alternative before you know it.

Got a Firefox extension or feature you use that gives you the same goods as Chrome? Let's hear about it in the comments. For a similar take, check out how to get Safari's best features in Firefox.

Sarah Palin, would-be banner of books

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:43:04.000 GMT

Time Magazine says that when Sarah Palin took office as mayor, she approached the town librarian and asked how to go about banning books from the town library:

[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Sarah Palin, VP nominee

Developers discuss future plans

Dave Caolo — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: iPod Family, Software, iPhone, App Store

Two popular Mac developers have taken the time to blog the future of their applications. First, Marco Arment has written about his plans for Instapaper for iPhone and iPod touch. If you haven't tried Instapaper yet, you're missing out. Basically, the desktop version is simply a web bookmarklet that lets you collect weblinks on a single page.

Have you found an article you'd like to read when you have some free time? Click the bookmarklet and it's added to your Instapaper page.

The iPod touch/iPhone version syncs with your links collection so you've got them on-the-go. It works wonderfully, and there's both a free version [link] and paid pro version [link] in the App Store.

In his blog post, Marco writes "...I compiled a feature list for what I want in Instapaper.app 2.0, and it's huge. It's easily 6 months of work ... But if I can pull off the product I want for 2.0, I'll really have something amazing."

Meahwhile, Brent Simmons has written about NetNewsWire, the popuar RSS reader. All four of them. "I'm working on four apps. But they're all NetNewsWire," he says. Specifically, version 1.0.9 is almost ready for the App Store [here's the current version] while 3.1.7 is under development for the Mac. At the same time, Brent is working on versions 3.2 and 4.0 for future release.

Good luck, guys! We appreciate the dedication and love your applications. Keep up the good work.

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The Kindle and DRM

brad@feld.com — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:51:24.000 GMT

I have completely fallen in love with my Kindle. I've now read over 50 books on it and have another 50 or so queued up. I've been reading exclusively on my Kindle when I travel (I no longer carry books with me), although I do read from the infinite pile of books in my house when I'm home. As a mega-reader, Amazon has completely nailed it.

However, I have one problem with the Kindle. DRM.

I view the Kindle as a pure substitute for a book. The way a book works is that I can read it and - when I'm done - I can give it to Amy to read. She can then give it to a friend of her's to read. Or put it on her bookshelf.

I can't do this with the Kindle. I can read the book. I can put it on my bookshelf. But I can't give it to Amy.

Now, I don't have a problem with the fact that I can't copy a book and have it simultaneously on two Kindles. However, Amazon has already solved for this - it lets me store my books on either my Kindle or in my Amazon account. So, I'm one small step away from "sharing" my book with Amy where she could then download it and read it on her Kindle. At this moment in time, she'd have it on her Kindle but I wouldn't have it on my Kindle.

That's how books work. That's how the Kindle could work. I'd even be satisfied with having a limit on the number of people that I could share a book with (at least two; less than five) and would be ok with a permanent association between a few Kindles. Remember - share means that we can't read it at the same time.

It makes no sense to me that I can physically give Amy my Kindle to read a book on, but can't transfer the book to her to read on her Kindle. Oh - so very close.

HOWTO build your own A-bomb

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:28:41.000 GMT

Today in the Guardian, the story of two plucky youngsters in 1966 who built their own homebrew A-bomb:

...the two amateurs were ironically aided by information published as part of President Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program, which spread word of the benefits of non-military nuclear power around the world. And Atoms for Peace was only the most prominent example of a fad for everything nuclear that propelled a huge amount of technical detail into the public domain.
Eventually, towards the end of 1966, two and a half years after they began, they were finished. "We produced a short document that described precisely, in engineering terms, what we proposed to build and what materials were involved," says Selden. "The whole works, in great detail, so that this thing could have been made by Joe's Machine Shop downtown."

How two students built an A-bomb (via Make)

Flickr Find: iPhone cubism

Mike Schramm — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends, Flickr Find, iPhone, Graphic Design

This little glitch has never happened to my iPhone, though I wish it had -- there's a glitch in the iPhone's camera that will occasionally cause it to slice up pictures like this, and our friend Veronica Belmont created a whole pool of the glitchy photos called iPhone cubism. Of course, if you want a picture of your little girl, it's more frustrating than anything else, but in an artistic sense, some of the pictures are really benefited by the random slicing. As if the iPhone didn't do enough, now it's throwing some art into the mix.

Of course, it's a bug, not a feature. Since several people are reporting this as a problem after 2.0 was released, we're guessing it's a software issue, perhaps a problem with syncing the little light sensor chip in the iPhone's camera. If you have some great pictures of this stuff, throw them into the pool on Flickr, and hopefully for the less artistic (and less bug-patient) among us, Apple will get this fixed soon.

Thanks, Jason!

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NetNewsWire plans

brent@ranchero.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:21:00.000 GMT

I’m working on four apps. But they’re all NetNewsWire.

Here are the current plans:

NetNewsWire/iPhone

1.0.9 will be uploaded to the App Store soon, probably this week. It may take a few more days to actually appear on the App Store. (Last time it was five days.)

1.0.9 addresses the most common issues: it makes adding clippings more bullet-proof, and it adds separate settings for keeping read and unread items.

These changes were going to be part of 1.1 (in development), but I decided not to wait for the rest of 1.1: I wanted to get these changes out sooner.

(1.1 will address most of the rest of what people are reporting and asking for.)

NetNewsWire/Macintosh

NetNewsWire 3.1.7 will be released soon — probably this week. (It’s a bug-fix release. It should be the last of the 3.1.x series.)

At the same time, I’m also working on NetNewsWire 3.2 and 4.0.

NetNewsWire 3.2 will add a few small features and fix a bunch of bugs. It’s a transitional release, updating some (but not all) of the data from 3.x format to 4.x.

NetNewsWire 4.0 will be a bigger update: some under-the-hood rewriting, feature deletion, more new features, UI changes, and more. (It will require OS X 10.5 or better; it will still run on PowerPC as well as Intel.)

I don’t have a timetable — any guesses at this point would be wrong. Very early versions are in the hands of testers.

In other words, work continues, as always.

Giving Google Chrome A Spin. This Thing Moves Fast.

Don Reisinger — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:37:11.000 GMT

Google announced Chrome yesterday and the company has already offered Windows XP and Vista owners the opportunity to try it out. And although I’ve only been able to use it for just a little while, Google Chrome is not only one of the fastest browsers I’ve ever used, it’s easily one of the best.

The Google Chrome install was quick and easy. In a matter of seconds (literally), I downloaded the application from the company’s site and installed it on my PC. Once up, Chrome asked to import the data from Firefox and I was off.

The first thing that will strike you about Chrome is its soft, yet elegant interface. Unlike other browsers, which sport clutter, Chrome doesn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, it makes tabs the primary element of the software, which can be dragged around and moved as needed on the fly. You can already do that in Safari, but in Chrome, it’s simply much easier.

Chrome also offers the “Omnibox”, which lets you input a web address or search the web in the address bar. You can do that now with Firefox, as well, but if you’re visiting a specific site like Amazon and you want to search that site, it features smart search engine detection to let you search Amazon instead of Google. I did just that on Amazon.com and it worked extremely well. In fact, it was much easier to search through sites and pages than any other browser I typically use.

My favorite feature so far in Chrome is the homepage. Unlike every other browser on the market, Chrome gives you a list of all the most-visited pages you’ve been to. I found this to be extremely useful. Instead of wasting time sifting through favorites or trying to find a specific page, I had all my most visited pages at my disposal when I opened Chrome up.

But perhaps more than anything, you’ll notice just how fast Chrome is immediately. After just ten minutes of jumping from site to site, I was amazed by how quickly I was able to get around. And unlike some browsers (I won’t mention any names), opening a slew of tabs doesn’t matter — it’s just as fast with or without tabs.

For those that want to shop for their girlfriend’s engagement ring without them knowing or just want to do, um, other things, Chrome also features an incognito mode, which will stop the browser from recording your activity. I tried it out and it works as advertised, and was delighted to see that I could turn it on and off in a flash.

One of my biggest problems with Firefox is that I have a tendency to lose my downloads when I get a little overzealous in my software tastes. Granted, you can go to the “Downloads” tab and find everything there, but Chrome makes it easier: it has a download box at the bottom of the screen that lets you access your downloaded files and put them where they need to go. I doubt I’ll lose anything again.

But not everything is perfect in Chrome. It’s still not available for Mac OS X and Linux users and it’s missing an easy method for organizing bookmarks. Worse, it currently doesn’t offer any way to email links. Google claims it’s just a beta release and these functions will be added in subsequent versions, but I still would have liked to see them in the first iteration.

All in all, Google Chrome, after just a little time using it, is superb. It’s not only fast, but it’s useful. It’s not only elegant, but it understands what you really want to do with a browser. And although it suffers from some setbacks that shouldn’t be overlooked, it’s still a highly-capable browser. Download Chrome. You won’t regret it.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

iTunes Podcasts to Net News Wire Script

PenFlight — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:11:29.000 GMT

Hi guys,

I hope this is the right forum :)

I thought that it would be nice to have newly downloaded podcasts from iTunes show up in Net News Wire. So I wrote a litte Applescript to do this:

http://www.onlinenerd24.de/2008/08/27/display-itunes-podcasts-in-your-rss-reader/

I think it might work with other (local) Feedreaders too, but NNW's ability to subscribe to local scripts is just perfect for this.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to send them to me. I know that it would be cool to click on the podcast's headeadline and direwctly go to iTunes but I was not able to figure out how to do this, because it always opens the downloaded podcast in my browser...

Thank you and kind regards, Hans

[posted by PenFlight in forum "Client Localizations (user submitted)/Scripts"]

Mona Lisa Cannon!

Collin Cunningham — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:30:00.000 GMT

In case you missed it - Adam & Jamie of Mythbusters fame demonstrated an 1102-barelled paintball gun @ Nvidia's Nvision event. As a visual metaphor for parallel processing, the gun created a simple remake of the Mona Lisa in a single shot.

More:
Motion-triggered paintball gun

Mac 101: Search by color label

Cory Bohon — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Mac 101

If you don't already use color labels to sort your files and folders, then you really should consider it. Using color labels allows you to enhance your productivity and file organization by assigning certain colors to certain files. You can assign color labels to files by doing a "Get Info" (highlight the file, then press command + i) on the file/folder and selecting a color from the label section.

What is the use of these labels if you can't search them? Well, you can! Open a new Finder window and press command + F. In the "kind" drop-down box, select "other" then find "File Label" in the list. Click it, then click "OK."

Now, you can narrow down your search by the color of its label. Note that if you are using Mac OS X Tiger, you will see "Color Label" instead of "File Label."

Want more quick tips and tricks like this? Try TUAW's Mac 101 section.

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Terminal Tips: Modify iTunes arrow links

Cory Bohon — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:00:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Terminal Tips

Do you know those little arrows that appear in iTunes when you have a song selected? You know, the ones that appear just after the title of the song, artist, and album and link to the iTunes Store when clicked? Yeah, those! Well, if you want the arrows to link to your iTunes library instead of Apple's induced store (and another impulse purchase), then just type the following command into Terminal (found in Applications > Utilities):

defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES

To change things back to normal, just replace the YES in the above command with NO. As some commenters have pointed out, you can temporarily reverse this hack by pressing option and clicking on the arrow.

Want to see more tips like this? Visit TUAW's Terminal Tips and TUAW Tips sections.

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Mythbusters RFID hacking episode canned by credit card company lawyers

Nilay Patel — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:47:00.000 GMT

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Although it's no secret that RFID is easily hacked (see: train passes, passports, credit cards, one billion other cards, etc.) it's still not necessarily common knowledge, and it sounds like the major credit card companies want to keep it that way -- according to Adam Savage, Mythbusters was all set to do a show exposing the weak security behind most RFID implementations but was shut down by lawyers from "American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... [who] absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode." Since Discovery is an ad-supported channel, it's not surprising that it backed down, but we'd say that the credit card industry would be far better served spending money on actually improving security rather than lawyering up and trying to keep consumers in the dark. Video after the break.

[Via Wired]

Continue reading Mythbusters RFID hacking episode canned by credit card company lawyers

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