The case in point at the moment is the new OpenOffice mouse. This thing is a monstrosity that has clearly tried to incorporate the good ideas and intentions of everyone who walked past during the design stage. 18 buttons? Check. Analog joystick? Check. Flash memory? Check. Adjustable resolution? Check.

Unfortunately, they also included the ideas from the guy that was frozen since 1994, hence the aesthetics and the cord. To wrap it all up, the finance guy’s suggestion was also included: the price is a hefty US$74.99.

The new OpenOffice mouse

I like my peripherals as much as the next guy (I use the Logitech MX Revolution at home and work myself), but the OpenOffice contraption looks to be an unwieldy and unmanageable piece of equipment with far too many functions for any of them to be useful. It’s the Crust pizza equivalent of a mouse – sometimes too many options and ‘features’ is a bad thing.

I’ll wait to hear more reviews to see if I am proven wrong (the reviews link on the official website currently goes nowhere) and I’d love to give it a shot it I get the chance, but until then, I’m chalking this one up as a good example of why you need a product manager with a strong point of view and the ability to say no.

Either that, or I am keeping very good company.

I’ve been a huge NFS fan (currently playing Shift) and, looking at the below image, yep, I’ve played every last one of them. That’s a lot of wiped-out Lamborghinis.

My personal favourite is still High Stakes, even though it’s been ten years. The race modes, weather, graphics and damage modeling really made it a stand out. Also, for a one-maker game, Porsche Unleashed was pretty awesome too.

I’m looking forward to seeing if they can actually make a decent racing game for the Wii with Nitro and as long as they keep releasing, I’ll keep driving.

Via The Inquisitr

Nothing too flash, just a proof of concept to play around with. I have no idea how this will look in any browser, so let me know how it looks to you. If you have an account, join the conversation!

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We had a great time and, combined with a lot more travel with work, I plan on writing a lot more on this site and about travel as I start to work out how to manage things while on the road. Maybe… I’ve been pretty hopeless overall!

The article goes into detail about various aspects of the keyboards, consistently comparing the two. The iPhone keyboard wins out overall, but not due to any one killer feature. What I did find interesting, though, was the section on Dynamic Key Resizing, which I didn’t realise the iPhone did:

The iPhone changes the size of the «touchable» area of each individual key while you type to make it easier for you to hit keys it thinks you might want to hit. David Pogue describes it like this:
“Although you don’t see it with your eyes, the sizes of the keys on the iPhone keyboard are changing all the time. That is, the software enlarges the “landing area” of certain keys, based on probability.”
For example, if you type the letter «N», the next letter is unlikely to be «H», but quite likely to be «G». Accordingly, the iPhone will increase or decrease the target areas of these keys. If you type «N» and then hit the space between «G» and «H», the iPhone will assume that you meant to type «G» because «NG» is a common letter combination in English, while «NH» is uncommon (except for people living in New Hampshire).
While this often cheats you into hitting wrong keys when typing in a language the iPhone doesn’t support, it’s a huge help for the languages it does support. As far as I can tell, Android doesn’t seem to do this kind of key resizing at all – you never know how much you’ve been relying on this feature until you use a virtual keyboard that doesn’t have it.

Make sure you read the full article, it’s very well put together. There are also a few other recent entries on ignore the code dealing with handhelds and keyboards.

I still wish the iPhone came with cursor keys every now and then though, not to mention the option to switch to a Dvorak layout.

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

Sure, deleting customers copies of George Orwell’s books off their Kindles remotely was a stupid thing to do, not to mention ironic in the extreme, but you have to appreciate a decent apology by someone who at least sounds like they’ve learned something.

Here’s hoping the Kindle starts opening up a bit and digital publishing continues to grow. Until then, there’s still Stanza (even if Amazon now owns them too).

1. Google Reader is by far the most accessed item on my iPhone and, while not an app, it certainly deserves pride of place on the homescreen. The iPhone interface is so easy to use and move around it makes reading feeds simple. Being online, it perfectly compliments the full web version and no other RSS reader I’ve tried has come close to touching it.

2. Stanza is a great app that I use to read ebooks. The online catalogs make downloading new titles a no brainer and the desktop app enables painless sharing of texts you already have. I’m a bit concerned that Amazon have bought the app, but I’m optimistic that they will use it to greatly improve the Kindle app (although I’m expecting that they will hobble future versions with more Kindle-like features)

3. OzWeather. This is basically a better weather app than the default iPhone app. Current conditions, forecasts and the radar images using the Bureau of Meteorology data, which is the critical point for an Australian weather app. While it might seem strange to pay money to replace an app that is included for free, this is a good example of a superior replacement. On my wishlist are push notifications to update the app badge with the current temperature, but I think that’s pretty unlikely. Overall, very nicely done.

4. Balance is a tiny app, but one that does the job it needs to do. I don’t keep a full budget on the iPhone, but I do use it to keep track of the money I spend. Balance lets me do this easily and quickly without any unnecessary bells and whistles.

5. TweetDeck and Tweetie. This is still a tie at the moment. Tweetie has been great, but after using TweetDeck for a while now, I’m starting to like it (even if I still haven’t come around to the desktop version yet). Both have an amazing range of features and stand out among the dozens of Twitter apps in the store at the moment. This is one category that is still exploding on iTunes at the moment, so there’s bound to be more apps that let you tweet on the move. Birdhouse, from Sandwich Dynamics, is one example of an interesting take on using Twitter from an iPhone.

6. Metlink Melbourne. Public transport in Melbourne can be a bit of a hit and miss affair, but at least with this app, you know when things are meant to turn up. Metlink supports saving favourite stations/stops and covers trains/trams/buses/VLine all in the one app. It’s just recently replaced the MetroMelb app and is worth getting if you rely on public transport. There’s versions for other cities under the ‘Metro’ title as well.

7. I like to use Instapaper on the desktop to save long articles I want to come back and read, so when the iPhone app came out, it really made sense. The Instapaper app downloads the saved sites, so once you’ve synced, you can access everything on a plane, in a tunnel or anywhere, regardless of reception. A great app.

8. Remember the Milk and Todo. This is another tie. As a GTD nut, I live and die by the lists I keep in Remember the Milk, but still haven’t found the perfect way to tie this in on the iPhone. The RTM app is nice and now supports push notifications, but has surprisingly poor support for smart lists and tasks with no deadline, which is what I need most of all. Todo offers full syncing with RTM and, while it doesn’t actually support smartlists, you can use the focus list and the filter to achieve a similar list. However, I’ve noticed that the sync hasn’t been working that well lately and I can’t rely on the app as much as I would like. It’s a relatively expensive app (and worth the price), but hopefully this issue will resolve itself soon. I know the crew at RTM are always developing their product, so I’m hoping a new version will arrive soon that will fit the bill – it’s one that I would use constantly if it fit my workflow correctly.

9. Aussie Rules LIVE is my pick of the AFL apps. It offers all the team information and news, as well as past scores and head to head information that you’ll need, but I find their live data to be the best. It’s easy to check the scores around the grounds and the commentary is a great way to get a feel for how the game is going. They’ve recently added DreamTeam scores as well, which is exciting, but unfortunately this doesn’t include the SuperCoach competition I play in – hopefully this is for a future update…

10. The final app on the list is Facebook. At the end of the day, it is just Facebook, but the way the app works just makes it perfect for the job. It’s easy to use and has most of the features you need. I would love support for more applications on the iPhone, similar to what Lexulous offers, but for catching up on news, photos and messages, you can’t beat the app.

I must give honourable mentions to a host of other apps as well, there are heaps that I use on a regular basis and some of the innovations and interfaces the developers have used are pretty amazing. WordPress, AppSniper, Weightbot, TripIt, CommBank, Snatch, Dropbox, AroundMe and eWallet are all apps that I could have added to this list. If you use this as a shopping list on the App Store, you’re sure to find some great applications.

Note that there’s no games on these lists. There’s plenty of those on my iPhone as well, so that is a list for another day.

I’m constantly looking for great new apps, so I’d love to hear any feedback about these lists, or suggestions for anything I may have missed.

Armed with just her cello and a small box of electronics, Zoë Keating is a one-woman orchestra. She records layer upon layer of cello, her feet dancing over an array of pedals to transform her solo performances into multipart works.

This is a pretty good start, and this video from Wired gives a bit more information:

To date, Zoë has released an EP titled ‘One Cello x 16′ and an album titled ‘One Cello x 16: Natoma’, in addition to work with other groups. More information on these albums and links to where to buy them, including iTunes, are on her site here.

I’m still kicking myself that I missed seeing her while she was playing here in Melbourne at the Corner in March this year, but will definitely catch her on the next tour!

Make sure you check out her music, you won’t regret it.

You can get the PDF version of the Sydney note from here. I’m not sure if they went through with handing them out at the bus, but it would’ve been a great sight to see if they did. Fantastic work.