Touching

Well, I'm posting this from my iPod touch using blogger's web interface, and while it's going to take a little time to get used to typing on this keyboard, it's not too bad. More later.

No CBR on my iPod touch

I guarantee, there'll never, ever, be a copy of "Put Your Record On" on this iPod touch, not while it's mine at least.

Technorati Tags: Apple, gadgets, iPod, iTunes, Music, iPod touch, technology

More Fry: On the Foleo

I had to pull this one out, what with the recent items on Palm. Stephen Fry:

Since then, in one of the most astonishing public suicide attempts in the history of this industry, Palm have produced a item that EVEN I DO NOT WANT, the Foleo. If it’s got a chip in it, and a keyboard, and WiFi and a screen and I haven’t sent off for one, then by God you’d better believe it’s in trouble. Though mind you, knowing me, I probably would have bought one in the end.

Technorati Tags: gadgets, Palm, PDA, tools

The Wonderful Words of Stephen Fry

Beloved national treasure on the iPhone and a plethora of other handhelds past, present, future, and notional. This is just one of many gems:

(I’m not even going to mention outside these parentheses the LG Prada phone, that’s an iPhone beater in the same way Tim Henman is a Federer beater).

Thanks to Asam on the wonderful Midlands Mac User Group list for the heads-up.

Technorati Tags: Apple, blogs, gadgets, iPhone, PDA, phones, retro, technology, Telephony, tools

Beautiful Type on the Web

Great writing too.

hitotoki : Coming Soon to Gotham

Technorati Tags: Art, Cities, culture, Design, Graphic Design, Travel, writing

Another day, another format

DVD Forum gives three-layer, 51GB HD DVD the thumbs up:

What's unclear at this stage is whether today's HD DVD drives and players will be able to read the new disc. However, with such a small number of HD DVD devices out there - relative to DVD players - only a limited number of early adopters are likely to be affected, and these are the kind of folk who are generally happy to upgrade in any case.

What's also unclear is whether anyone will still care by the time the whole mess is sorted out. Apple seems to be baking on being the company with the most workable infrastructure for actually selling video by the time the industry realises that a new kind of Polycarbonate disk isn't the answer. Rick McCallum can be found in this month's Star Wars Insider voicing pretty much the same opinion, though his suggestion of each studio having its own "web site" to deliver content sounds like a royal PITA. He's right though, HD-DVD and Blu-ray might well tire each other out fighting, while the real battle is somewhere else entirely.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Future, iTunes, Media, movies, technology, video

Ok, this is funny

I drink in Starbucks, and I like the coffee, but I share Arc90's dismay when any music I like gets picked up by the Evil Bean Empire. Obviously then, this is a feature I'd like to see on the iPod touch tooBasement.org:

Since the iPhone's release, hackers have been tirelessly working to open up the iPhone. Custom ringtones. Homebrew applications. Even SIM activation. They've done a very impressive job. Well, we need their help again. We need a feature that would cleanse our souls and protect us from the rampant homogeneity of Starbucks.

Personally, one of the reasons I keep my iPod with me is so that I don't have to listen to the music in Starbucks..

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iTunes, Music, Starbucks

Hunt for Steve Fossett with Mechanical Turk

I'm spending my evening doing this, and I suggest you do the same:

Greetings from Amazon Mechanical Turk On Monday, September 3, 2007, Steve Fossett, the first person to fly a plane around the world without refueling and the first person to fly around the world in a balloon went missing in Nevada. An airplane he was flying failed to return. No one has any idea where he is. Through the generous efforts of individuals at several organizations, detailed satellite imagery has been made available for his last known whereabouts. HITs have been created to ask volunteers to help review these images and flag potential areas of interest which will be instrumental in the search and rescue efforts. This is a race against time and any help you can provide will make a huge difference. Friends and family of Steve Fossett would like to thank you for helping them with this cause. Amazon Mechanical Turk Team http://www.mturk.com/

Technorati Tags: Amazon

Orlowski is spot on

I don't often say that. Yes, with the iPod touch, Apple has reinvented the PDA market in a way almost no-one expected. Remember, Steve Jobs has never been a convergence guy. He's always argued been an advocate of elegant devices that do one or two things really well. I moved to a Palm Vx (from a Newton MessagePad 120) because it was so simple and elegant, but each successive Palm device (a 515, a T3, a LifeDrive) became more complex, unwieldy, and unstable. The iPod touch just sneaked up behind Palm and killed their TX, while they were stabbing the Foleo.

And as a bonus, the importance of which few pundits or bloggers have realised yet, Apple stealthily enters a new market altogether: the connected PDA. This 'Second Box' business is one that almost everyone has neglected, because they've followed the conventional wisdom that Everything Must Be Converged. But what if that isn't true?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, gadgets, iPhone, iPod, Mac OS X, mobile, Palm, PDA, puppy, technology

Palm cancels Foleo, World yawns

Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm Inc announces the cancellation of the least-useful thing Palm ever almost-shipped. There's a lot of praise for his 'bold decision' in the comments. Hello? He made the decision, 3 months ago, to tout the Foleo as the next big thing in mobile. He should be begging for another chance, but then I'm not a shareholder:

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We're not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first.

Technorati Tags: Business, gadgets, Palm, puppy, technology

Palm cancels Foleo, lunatics wail

Good grief:

At first I was skeptical and joined in the chorus of naysayers on forums eager to decry the Foleo. But over time I began to understand just how truly valuable a light-weight, long-lasting, instant on and elegantly simple sub-laptop could be. I literally made myself my own cardboard mockup of the device and carried it around my office. The potential of the Foleo cannot be grounded in today's laptop uses. It truly is a shift in paradigm.

Technorati Tags: gadgets, Palm, mobile, technology

Explain to me again how this hurts the iPod

Silicon Alley Insider: Estimating Financial Impact of iTunes/NBC: Small, For Now, But We Still Expect Reconciliation:

Apple's iTunes store exists primarily as a way to promote iPod sales (and, down the line, perhaps gizmos like the iPhone and Apple TV). The pitch is one-stop shopping: Come to us, and you'll find all the music, TV, etc. that you need, in one place, with one pricing scheme. It's simple and it works. Steve Jobs doesn't need the revenue that NBC generates. But he does need to make sure consumers can find whatever content they want at his store. If they have to go elsewhere for that content, that new video iPod may look less appealing.

So, if Apple agrees to make it hard to put non-DRM content on the iPod then NBC will let them sell shows one day after they air. If they don't then those shows turn up on BitTorrent about an hour after they go out on the networks. I don't think I'll sweat over my purchase of the next iPod with video, which might well come tomorrow..

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, gadgets, iPod, iPod nano, Media, iTunes, Television, video

Word: Just Say No

Stephen Poole, author of the excellent computer games book Trigger Happy has found a new Zen in losing Word. Excellent, informed and enjoyable. Goodbye, cruel Word:

For the first time, I no longer have a copy of Microsoft Word installed on either of my computers. That’s some change. I wrote my first two books, and many hundreds of articles, in Word. But I’m writing my third book in an inexpensive yet wonderful piece of Mac-only software written by a single person instead of a “business unit” at Redmond. Scoured of Word, my computers feel clean, refreshed, relieved of a hideous and malign burden. How did it come to this?

Technorati Tags: Books, Macintosh, Microsoft, Office, puppy, Word, writing

Michael Jackson, R.I.P.

That's the important Michael Jackson of course. Is there another?

Technorati Tags: Beer