As if I needed another short cut for getting things done at the studio. Thanks to the folks over at The Ad Concepter I can take all the 3 hour lunches I want and sometimes even sneak in a movie...
And then there's this.
So, Dell. What is up? I thought y'all had dropped the Stoner Dude and were going to be exclusively tageting the upscale market. The pitch for your new Ditty is pretty sweet (makes sencimelia to me anyway) even more, it's proof that you can take the Dude out of Dell but you can't take the Dell out of Dude... Dude, that makes no sense. Anyway, dig the Dell Ditty
If you're like me and you like a fresh screen saver every now and then, you'll really dig this selection of swanky Pin Ups. If you're in need of a weather graphic you'll thank me for this one: Rain? (this one takes a second or two to load but, like the rain, it's worth the wait.)
Speaking of drinking, say hello to The Bar Man!
Ok, have a great week,
HMK
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
It's Mad - Mad I Say!
That's Right. Every single cover of Mad Magazine can be found at Doug Gilford's way cool site.
Mad Do Worry, Just Go!
Monday, September 26, 2005
Fauna Marinae
Dansih Veterinary and Agricultural Library has a nice illustration exibit entitled Fauna Marinae. Among them are some of the oldest and finest illustrated works on the magnificent fauna of the sea.
Dive In!
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Link Vault +
Crazy week. Live emergency plane landings (Awesome perfect landing by the way, Go JetBlue!), earthquakes, a midweek Mass Exodus thanks to the one-two punch of Katrina & Rita on the Gulf Coast. Sometimes all we can really do is either prepare for the worst, pray, and hope for the best. Or, write your social security number on your arm and...
Anyway.
Why not try a piece of Daily Candy Warning: Candy Can Be Addictive! I'm not sure how accurate World O Meters is but it's worth a look. I'm thinking of a number... And finally, if you like to laugh when you're wasting valuable time looking at a computer screen, this is Ze Place for you, slacker.
Now, who needs a Karinarita!
HMK Link Vault
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Pocket TV Tuner
Dig the The TerraTec. A self-contained tuner with software for watching TV on your laptop. Even sweeter, you can also record live video through the tuner and pick up digital signals.
A pocket TV Tuner? Sure, why not? About $200.
Tune In
That's Right.
HMK
Friday, September 16, 2005
One Naughty Bird
Ever wonder what makes a cat want to shred a pigeon? Well, after meeting this bird you'll understand completely...Meet The Bird
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Do It For Mom!
Astros rally around Rocket with emotional win over Fish
HOUSTON -- Roger Clemens dug his spikes into the dirt and stared momentarily at the ground before throwing his first pitch. He knew his mother wanted him on the mound.
"I get my determination from her," Clemens said. "She told me to go to work."
The Houston Astros ace made his scheduled start Wednesday night and allowed one run in 6 1/3 innings in a 10-2 win over the Florida Marlins, pitching in honor of his mother after she died early that morning.
Bess Clemens died in Georgetown, Texas, because of complications from emphysema. She was 75.
"I feel very blessed that she's at peace now. The last 10 years were hard on her, the last 2-3 days were grueling," said Clemens, who spent his mother's final night with her. "But she was very tough to the end. She didn't want to give up."
Just after the final out, a tribute to Clemens' mother was shown on the giant video screen, and Astros players stood in the infield and watched, while Clemens saw it on a monitor in the clubhouse. The video included Clemens talking about his mother at previous news conferences, his mother talking about him and video of them together on a baseball field.
"It was great to see her look so pretty like I remember," he said with tears in his eyes.
The Rocket often shared his affection for his mother, saying her health was an important factor as he weighed retirement the past two offseasons. His stepfather died when he was young, and his mother was an inspiration.
"His mother was a very special person in his life. I can see the two of them together, Roger was still a little boy around her," New York Yankees manager Joe Torre said in St. Petersburg, Fla. "She's been fighting this thing for a long period of time. Hopefully she's at peace and Roger is also."
Clemens has talked about how much he hoped his mother would be able to attend his Hall of Fame induction.
"I wanted her to hang on so I could thank her properly at the Hall of Fame," he said.
Bess Clemens came to Yankee Stadium for her son's first attempt at his 300th win on May 26, 2003, against Boston. Suffering from emphysema and coming off a recent bout with pneumonia, she wore a breathing tube around her face. But she wasn't able to attend when Clemens won No. 300 21⁄2 weeks later against St. Louis.
His mother did throw out the ceremonial first pitch before a Yankees game in August 2003.
"It was great. They should have let her stay on the mound. She had better stuff than I had," Clemens said.
In her final hours, she was talking baseball. Clemens said his mother asked if the Astros had made the playoffs yet, inquired about Andy Pettitte and more than once mentioned Shoeless Joe Jackson.
"I asked her if she was in the fields, and she said I think I am," Clemens said. "She just loves the game of baseball."
Clemens (12-7) lowered his major league-best ERA to 1.77 while winning for the first time in seven starts. It was his 340th victory, the most among active pitchers, and he had four strikeouts to increase his career total to 4,492.
The seven-time Cy Young Award winner allowed five hits. He threw 55 of 83 pitches for strikes, and his only walks were those in the first inning.
Clemens had a tough first inning, with two four-pitch walks -- including leadoff hitter Luis Castillo before Jeff Conine singled. Florida then took the lead on Carlos Delgado's grounder, but didn't score another run as Houston stopped a three-game losing streak and pulled within a half-game of the Marlins in the NL wild-card race.
"As soon as I climbed on the mound, I was lost a little bit," Clemens said. "I knew I had to gather it up pretty quick and get through that."
A.J. Burnett (12-11) lost his fifth straight start for the Marlins (78-68), giving up three runs and six hits over six innings with five strikeouts and five walks.
After Houston (77-68) loaded the based on a walk and two singles, Burnett walked consecutive batters -- Clemens was the second -- to give the Astros a 2-1 lead. Craig Biggio followed with an RBI single.
Clemens had retired 17 of 19 batters, allowing only a pair of singles, before Damion Easley and Juan Pierre had consecutive one-out singles in the seventh with the Astros up 3-1.
After Pierre had reached base, catcher Brad Ausmus went out to the mound for a lengthy conversation with Clemens. Manger Phil Garner then came out, and after speaking briefly with Clemens, changed pitchers.
Clemens got a standing ovation as he walked from the mound, and when he got to the dugout shared high-fives and handshakes with his teammates who swarmed around him. Reliever Chad Qualls got the first batter he raced to ground into an inning-ending double play.
"It was just Rocket being Rocket. He was just adding to his legendary status," Biggio said.
Marlins manager Jack McKeon said he already had plenty of admiration for Clemens.
"You have to know he was in a lot of grief," McKeon said. "But he's a pro. He's always the same old Roger. He's a first-ballot Hall of Famer."
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
You Can Help Victims of Hurricane Katrina!
Hurricane Katrina has blazed a trail of devastation throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Across the Gulf Coast, Katrina engulfed thousands of homes and decimated the landscape in what could become the most destructive storm in U.S. history. Victims are stranded and in need of immediate medical care, food and water, and tens of thousands of people will need temporary housing for months.
Help people affected by this storm by making a donation today.
I Want To Help!
Monday, August 29, 2005
Here we go again!
Apple plans special event next week:
Apple appears to be set to introduce an all-new iPod next week as the company will hold a special event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Apple has used similar events in the past to make such major announcements.
In an invitation sent to select media, including iLounge (where I read about it), Apple hints that it will unveil a significant new product at the event. The invitation reads in part: “1000 songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again.” The slogan “1000 songs in your pocket” was first used by Apple when the original 5GB iPod was introduced in 2001.
The invitation-only event will take place on September 7 at 10:00 a.m.
That's Right,
HMK
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Check This Out: It's Not Just A Novelty!
Libraries offering audiobook downloads
GUILDERLAND, New York (AP) -- A new way to borrow audiobooks from the library involves no CDs, no car trips, no fines and no risk of being shushed.
Rather, public libraries from New York City to Alameda, California, are letting patrons download Tom Clancy techno-thrillers, Arabic tutorials and other titles to which they can listen on their computers or portable music players -- all without leaving home.
Librarians say such offerings help libraries stay relevant in the digital age.
Barbara Nichols Randall, director of the Guilderland Public Library in suburban Albany, said the library considered the needs of younger readers and those too busy to visit.
"This is a way for us to have library access 24/7," she said.
There's still one big hitch, though: The leading library services offer Windows-friendly audiobook files that can't be played on Apple Computer Inc.'s massively popular iPod player.
Vendors such as OverDrive Inc. and OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc.'s NetLibrary have licensing deals with publishers and provide digital books using Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Audio format, which includes copyright protections designed to help audiobooks stand apart from the often lawless world of song swapping.
A patron with a valid library card visits a library Web site to borrow a title for, say, three weeks. When the audiobook is due, the patron must renew it or find it automatically "returned" in a virtual sense: The file still sits on the patron's computer, but encryption makes it unplayable beyond the borrowing period.
"The patron doesn't have to do anything after the lending period," said Steve Potash, chief executive of OverDrive. "The file expires. It checks itself back into the collection. There's no parts to lose. It's never damaged. It can never be late."
Potash said about 1,000 libraries have signed up for OverDrive's audiobook service since its debut late last year. NetLibrary, teaming up with Recorded Books, launched a similar service in January and counts 200 library customers.
Libraries offering audiobook downloads range from large institutions in New York and Los Angeles to smaller ones for Cleveland, Ohio, Maricopa County, Arizona, North Little Rock, Arkansas and Omaha, Nebraska. The Hawaii State Public Library System signed up earlier this month.
Guilderland pays NetLibrary about $6,000 a year for more than 850 titles. Randall considers that a good deal, noting that a single audiobook can cost the library up to $80 when bought on CD.
Under the NetLibrary program, Guilderland gets a set number of downloads for all titles each year, and a single title can be borrowed by multiple patrons simultaneously as long as the cap hasn't been reached. Downloads over the cap cost extra. Patrons must provide their own audio players, although they may listen on their home computers if they do not have one.
Other libraries make different arrangements. OverDrive, for example, generally takes a more traditional approach. When a copy is checked out, no other patron may download it until the borrowing period ends.
It's still unclear what impact such services will have on audiobook download sales from companies such as Audible Inc., although one analyst suggested it could inspire more sales as patrons buy for keeps a title they had borrowed.
"It's certainly smart for the publishers to do this," said Phil Leigh, a senior analyst with Inside Digital Media.
Digital downloads are a part of a natural progression for libraries, which have evolved from lending books to cassettes and videotapes to CDs and DVDs. OverDrive recently launched a video download service for libraries.
Librarians say they had little interest in audiobook downloads just a few years ago, but they have since noticed what everyone else has: the ubiquity of people sporting earbuds on streets, buses and malls.
Nearly 28 million portable audio players were sold last year, according to In-Stat, a technology research company. With more than 21 million sold, the iPod remains the signature portable player. But it uses the Advanced Audio Coding format with FairPlay, its own digital rights management system and one incompatible with Windows' technology.
Just as the lack of a standard digital audio format has fragmented the music download market, it affects audiobooks.
Users of iPods can still listen to books purchased through sources such as audible.com or Apple's own iTunes Music Store, but the library services, for now, are geared toward computers and devices that support Windows Media Audio files. OverDrive files can be burned to CDs and converted to iPod friendly formats, but NetLibrary's cannot.
Marge Gammon of NetLibrary said that despite iPod's cache, the company wanted a product that could be played on a range of devices. OverDrive's Potash notes there's a growing market of portable audio players, some priced lower then $50 (Regular iPod models start at $299, though the Minis start at $199 and Shuffles at $99).
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said the company has no plans to change its copy-protection formats and would not comment on the incompatibility issue.
Librarians say they have heard complaints from iPod users, but there's little they can do beyond waiting for the industry to sort out its differences.
One California library shunned the download services completely, largely because of iPod's popularity. Instead, Newport Beach Public Library bought 15 iPod Shuffles and loaded them up with audiobooks from iTunes to loan out.
Patrons are liable for any loss or damage, though librarian Genesis Hansen said there's been no problems so far.
Copy, right? 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.Original Source
That's Right,
HMK
GUILDERLAND, New York (AP) -- A new way to borrow audiobooks from the library involves no CDs, no car trips, no fines and no risk of being shushed.
Rather, public libraries from New York City to Alameda, California, are letting patrons download Tom Clancy techno-thrillers, Arabic tutorials and other titles to which they can listen on their computers or portable music players -- all without leaving home.
Librarians say such offerings help libraries stay relevant in the digital age.
Barbara Nichols Randall, director of the Guilderland Public Library in suburban Albany, said the library considered the needs of younger readers and those too busy to visit.
"This is a way for us to have library access 24/7," she said.
There's still one big hitch, though: The leading library services offer Windows-friendly audiobook files that can't be played on Apple Computer Inc.'s massively popular iPod player.
Vendors such as OverDrive Inc. and OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc.'s NetLibrary have licensing deals with publishers and provide digital books using Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Audio format, which includes copyright protections designed to help audiobooks stand apart from the often lawless world of song swapping.
A patron with a valid library card visits a library Web site to borrow a title for, say, three weeks. When the audiobook is due, the patron must renew it or find it automatically "returned" in a virtual sense: The file still sits on the patron's computer, but encryption makes it unplayable beyond the borrowing period.
"The patron doesn't have to do anything after the lending period," said Steve Potash, chief executive of OverDrive. "The file expires. It checks itself back into the collection. There's no parts to lose. It's never damaged. It can never be late."
Potash said about 1,000 libraries have signed up for OverDrive's audiobook service since its debut late last year. NetLibrary, teaming up with Recorded Books, launched a similar service in January and counts 200 library customers.
Libraries offering audiobook downloads range from large institutions in New York and Los Angeles to smaller ones for Cleveland, Ohio, Maricopa County, Arizona, North Little Rock, Arkansas and Omaha, Nebraska. The Hawaii State Public Library System signed up earlier this month.
Guilderland pays NetLibrary about $6,000 a year for more than 850 titles. Randall considers that a good deal, noting that a single audiobook can cost the library up to $80 when bought on CD.
Under the NetLibrary program, Guilderland gets a set number of downloads for all titles each year, and a single title can be borrowed by multiple patrons simultaneously as long as the cap hasn't been reached. Downloads over the cap cost extra. Patrons must provide their own audio players, although they may listen on their home computers if they do not have one.
Other libraries make different arrangements. OverDrive, for example, generally takes a more traditional approach. When a copy is checked out, no other patron may download it until the borrowing period ends.
It's still unclear what impact such services will have on audiobook download sales from companies such as Audible Inc., although one analyst suggested it could inspire more sales as patrons buy for keeps a title they had borrowed.
"It's certainly smart for the publishers to do this," said Phil Leigh, a senior analyst with Inside Digital Media.
Digital downloads are a part of a natural progression for libraries, which have evolved from lending books to cassettes and videotapes to CDs and DVDs. OverDrive recently launched a video download service for libraries.
Librarians say they had little interest in audiobook downloads just a few years ago, but they have since noticed what everyone else has: the ubiquity of people sporting earbuds on streets, buses and malls.
Nearly 28 million portable audio players were sold last year, according to In-Stat, a technology research company. With more than 21 million sold, the iPod remains the signature portable player. But it uses the Advanced Audio Coding format with FairPlay, its own digital rights management system and one incompatible with Windows' technology.
Just as the lack of a standard digital audio format has fragmented the music download market, it affects audiobooks.
Users of iPods can still listen to books purchased through sources such as audible.com or Apple's own iTunes Music Store, but the library services, for now, are geared toward computers and devices that support Windows Media Audio files. OverDrive files can be burned to CDs and converted to iPod friendly formats, but NetLibrary's cannot.
Marge Gammon of NetLibrary said that despite iPod's cache, the company wanted a product that could be played on a range of devices. OverDrive's Potash notes there's a growing market of portable audio players, some priced lower then $50 (Regular iPod models start at $299, though the Minis start at $199 and Shuffles at $99).
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said the company has no plans to change its copy-protection formats and would not comment on the incompatibility issue.
Librarians say they have heard complaints from iPod users, but there's little they can do beyond waiting for the industry to sort out its differences.
One California library shunned the download services completely, largely because of iPod's popularity. Instead, Newport Beach Public Library bought 15 iPod Shuffles and loaded them up with audiobooks from iTunes to loan out.
Patrons are liable for any loss or damage, though librarian Genesis Hansen said there's been no problems so far.
Copy, right? 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.Original Source
That's Right,
HMK
Some Of My Favorite Mac OSX Tips
MAC OS X HINTS
From Mac World's Rob Griffiths
Relocate Applications from the Dock
If you like to download and try out lots of shareware and freeware, you probably put the apps in a special downloads folder (or just leave them on the desktop) until you decide whether they’re keepers that belong in your Applications folder. And when you’ve found a program worth hanging on to, you probably quit the program, switch to the Finder, and start moving windows around to file the program away. Here’s a little time-saver for next time: Assuming that you’ve put the app in the Dock for easy access, you can simply Command-click on its icon in the Dock and drag it to your Applications folder (or any folder you choose). Release the mouse button, and you’ve moved the file. (You can also move an open application, whose icon automatically appears in the Dock, but it’s always safer to quit the app first; otherwise, it might not open when you next launch it.)
Send Windows-Friendly Attachments in Mail
By rearranging these blocks in the Finder's preference file, you can control the default order of columns in list-view windows.
Are you a lone-wolf Mac user in an office full of Windows PCs? If so, you may get tired of always having to tell Mail to send Windows-friendly attachments (it’s a check box at the bottom of the Attachments dialog box). Forget to select it, and you’ll confound your Windows recipients, who will see multiple attachments to your message (Mail causes this by sending the file’s data fork and its resource fork).
There’s an easy workaround, and it’s hiding in plain sight—just select Edit: Attachments: Always Send Windows Friendly Attachments when you don’t have a new message window open (the option will be grayed out if you do). From now on, all attachments will default to Windows-friendly mode. After you choose this option, if you attach files to e-mail messages going to Mac users, the missing resource fork may render the attachment unusable for those recipients. In those cases, deselect the Send Windows Friendly Attachments option that appears when you click on the Attach icon.
Change the Column Order for List View
If you rely on list-view windows on a daily basis, you may have discovered a limitation of the Finder. While it’s quite possible to choose which columns you want new list-view windows to display (just use View: Show View Options or type Command-J), you can’t control the order in which those columns appear. That is, if you prefer to see Size to the left of Date Modified, for example, you can drag the columns into that order for the window you’re viewing—but the change isn’t global, so you’ll have to do it again every time you open a list-view window. Here’s how to work around this limitation.
The first thing you need to do is set global list-view options. So open a folder in list view, select View: Show View Options, make sure it’s set to All Windows, and then pick a few columns to show—just make sure you change something. This ensures that the file you’re about to edit has all column headers in it.
Next, navigate to your user folder/Library/Preferences folder, make a backup of the com.apple .finder.plist file, store the backup somewhere safe, and drag the original file onto the TextEdit application icon. Now press Command-F to bring up the Find box, type StandardViewOptions , and press enter. TextEdit will highlight that string in a line that readsStandardViewOptions . This is the section of the file that controls the default look for list, icon, and column views. If you scroll down just a bit, the first section you’ll see should be for list view, and it starts with a line that reads N1sv .
Below that, you’ll see eight separate sections. Each one of these sections represents a list-view column; the value below the ColumnPropertyID key identifies the column. The eight possibilities are dnam (Name), phys (Size), kind (Kind), modd (Date Modified), ascd (Date Created), labl (Label), shvr (Version), and cmmt (Comments).
To rearrange the default column order, you need to cut the entire sections from to , and then paste them in the order in which you’d like them displayed. For example, to see the Label column after the Name column (Name must be the first column), scroll down to the section that has the labl key and cut the entire section, including the opening and closing tags.
Now scroll back up to the top of the StandardViewOptions section, and paste the labl section directly below the closing ( ) tag for the dnam section. Arrange the other sections as you like; note that sections with a ColumnVisible key of 0 are those you’ve chosen not to see, so there’s no reason to reorder them.
When you’re done editing, save the file and quit TextEdit. To see your changes, you’ll need to restart the Finder. You could log out and log in, or use Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities) to quit the Finder, and then click on its Dock icon to relaunch it. When you do, you should find that all list-view windows open in your preferred column order.
[Contributing Editor Rob Griffiths is the author of Mac OS X Power Hound, Panther Edition (O’Reilly, 2004) and runs the Mac OS X Hints Web site.]
From Mac World's Rob Griffiths
Relocate Applications from the Dock
If you like to download and try out lots of shareware and freeware, you probably put the apps in a special downloads folder (or just leave them on the desktop) until you decide whether they’re keepers that belong in your Applications folder. And when you’ve found a program worth hanging on to, you probably quit the program, switch to the Finder, and start moving windows around to file the program away. Here’s a little time-saver for next time: Assuming that you’ve put the app in the Dock for easy access, you can simply Command-click on its icon in the Dock and drag it to your Applications folder (or any folder you choose). Release the mouse button, and you’ve moved the file. (You can also move an open application, whose icon automatically appears in the Dock, but it’s always safer to quit the app first; otherwise, it might not open when you next launch it.)
Send Windows-Friendly Attachments in Mail
By rearranging these
Are you a lone-wolf Mac user in an office full of Windows PCs? If so, you may get tired of always having to tell Mail to send Windows-friendly attachments (it’s a check box at the bottom of the Attachments dialog box). Forget to select it, and you’ll confound your Windows recipients, who will see multiple attachments to your message (Mail causes this by sending the file’s data fork and its resource fork).
There’s an easy workaround, and it’s hiding in plain sight—just select Edit: Attachments: Always Send Windows Friendly Attachments when you don’t have a new message window open (the option will be grayed out if you do). From now on, all attachments will default to Windows-friendly mode. After you choose this option, if you attach files to e-mail messages going to Mac users, the missing resource fork may render the attachment unusable for those recipients. In those cases, deselect the Send Windows Friendly Attachments option that appears when you click on the Attach icon.
Change the Column Order for List View
If you rely on list-view windows on a daily basis, you may have discovered a limitation of the Finder. While it’s quite possible to choose which columns you want new list-view windows to display (just use View: Show View Options or type Command-J), you can’t control the order in which those columns appear. That is, if you prefer to see Size to the left of Date Modified, for example, you can drag the columns into that order for the window you’re viewing—but the change isn’t global, so you’ll have to do it again every time you open a list-view window. Here’s how to work around this limitation.
The first thing you need to do is set global list-view options. So open a folder in list view, select View: Show View Options, make sure it’s set to All Windows, and then pick a few columns to show—just make sure you change something. This ensures that the file you’re about to edit has all column headers in it.
Next, navigate to your user folder/Library/Preferences folder, make a backup of the com.apple .finder.plist file, store the backup somewhere safe, and drag the original file onto the TextEdit application icon. Now press Command-F to bring up the Find box, type StandardViewOptions , and press enter. TextEdit will highlight that string in a line that reads
Below that, you’ll see eight separate
To rearrange the default column order, you need to cut the entire sections from
Now scroll back up to the top of the StandardViewOptions section, and paste the labl section directly below the closing (
When you’re done editing, save the file and quit TextEdit. To see your changes, you’ll need to restart the Finder. You could log out and log in, or use Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities) to quit the Finder, and then click on its Dock icon to relaunch it. When you do, you should find that all list-view windows open in your preferred column order.
[Contributing Editor Rob Griffiths is the author of Mac OS X Power Hound, Panther Edition (O’Reilly, 2004) and runs the Mac OS X Hints Web site.]
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
71" DLP TV by Samsung!
So, your 61" is too small? Well, why not try a 71" Tv by Samsung? This SVP-71L8UH is a HDMI DLP TV with a 1920x1080 resolution and a 10000:1 contrast ratio. Not bad at 6000 EUR.
That's Right!
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Paypal.com Send Money to: hmk@tg-o.com
Congratulations. You will dig this. I guarantee it.
Seat Guru That's Right!
If you find this Valuble Information indeed valuable, please send $1.00 to HMK: Paypal.com Send Money To: hmk@tg-o.com PayPal Send Money
THE ABOVE was my initial thought for this enty.
NEXT, I thought of this:
Pssssst.
Wanna know a cool little unknown fact?
Some seats on airplanes are more comfortable than others.
It's true...
THEN, I came up with this approach:
Dear friends, let me ask you -
Do you fly much?
Have you ever reluctantly spent 7.50 US in the US for a bottle of domestic Shiner Bock Beer labled as an import?
Is 4.50 US too much for a Vente coffee of the day?
What if I told you there was a guaranteed way to assist you in...
FINALLY, I realized that all I needed to do was throw this out there and see what happens. Because after all, an idea won't work until you do.
The best part is that Good Karma always increases your odds of actually scoring the most comfortable seat.
Send Money
Gracias,
HMK
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Pimp My Shuffle!
Speck Products have just released a pretty sweet metal iPod Shuffle case. Machined from lightweight aluminum and finished with the eye-catching shine of nickel plating, the 2 part design with included Metal USB cap make it easy to synch and update. In A Word: Bitchin'!
Speck Products
That's Right,
HMK
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
A Podcasting Hit Parade: The Early Days
With the number of podcasts growing fast, each day brings new and sometimes raucous programming. But unlike blogs or Web sites, you can't skim these digital radio programs to get the gist -- you need to listen to them. So to help you get started, the staff of BusinessWeek Online has compiled a list of notable podcasts, ranging from some of our favorites from the genre's pioneers to a few of the newest programs around. And after you've listened to these podcasts, take their poll and let them know your favorite.
Here are Business Week Online's top picks for the new genre of Net radio.
Take Me To The Podcasts
My pick? That's Right, Hands down: Voices From The Vault
* If this link opens as a Real Audio file and you want to listen in iTunes, simply copy the URL, go to iTunes>Advanced>Open Stream and then paste. Dig.
HMK
Good Night Peter.
Among the Chatty Anchors, a Voice of Civility
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
The New York Times
He was not warm or cozily familiar. He was cool and even a little supercilious. If you invited Peter Jennings into your living room, he would be likely to raise an eyebrow at the stains on the coffee table. He was not America's best friend or kindly uncle. But in an era of chatty newscasters, jousting analysts and hyperactive commentators, he was a rare voice of civility.
That old-school formality is what will most be missing on the network news. On ABC, Mr. Jennings was a smooth, sophisticated anchor who could gracefully wing his way through the rawest breaking crises, from the Challenger explosion in 1986 to the Sept. 11 attacks. But so can many of the men and women who have been groomed to take his place someday.
What Mr. Jennings had that will be harder to replace was a worldliness that was rooted in his personality and also in his rich background of experience in the field.
Mr. Jennings, who died on Sunday, worked hard his entire life to overcome a flighty beginning: he never attended college, and got his start on Canadian television with the help of his father, a senior executive at the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Mr. Jennings became famous as the host of a dance show for teenagers and was only 26 when ABC News recruited him to be an anchor, more on the basis of his good looks and smooth delivery than anything else. He made up for it later, working as a correspondent in Vietnam, Beirut and Europe. His colleagues teased him about his dashing trench coats, but nobody looked better in Burberry or in black tie.
He took himself and the news seriously, so seriously that after the networks cut back on convention coverage in 2004, he insisted on anchoring those events gavel to gavel on ABC's tiny digital cable channel.
When bad things happened to the country, he was reassuringly calm and self-possessed, delivering live coverage of Sept. 11 without alarm or emotionalism. (And those few moments when he let some feeling show, choking a little and urging viewers to "call your children," brought home the gravity of the attack all the more poignantly.)
When bad things happened to him, he showed the same aplomb. When Mr. Jennings announced that he had to step down to be treated for advanced lung cancer in April, he shunned any hint of self-pity, thanking viewers for their support in the most reticent way possible.
"I will continue to do the broadcast; on good days my voice will not always be like this," he said, straining to sound jaunty. "Certainly, it's been a long time. And I hope it goes without saying that a journalist who doesn't value - deeply - the audience's loyalty should be in another line of work."
Mr. Jennings was not the last of the great white male news presenters, though it might have seemed that way after Tom Brokaw retired from NBC, Dan Rather resigned from CBS and CBS's chairman, Les Moonves, declared that the era of Voice of God anchors was over.
Brian Williams on NBC is as natty, self-possessed and buttoned-down as Mr. Brokaw and Mr. Jennings combined. Charles Gibson, who stepped in most often to replace Mr. Jennings when he began cancer treatment, proved a comfortingly familiar, competent face. For now at least, Bob Schieffer at CBS has introduced a no-nonsense note of the elder statesman after the nightly roller-coaster ride that was Dan Rather.
All of them remain in the classic anchor mold, but not one of them has the hauteur and dignity that Mr. Jennings brought to the news. Network newscasts have lost much of their audience and authority, but throughout all the setbacks, erosions and even his own fatal illness, he never lost his uncommon touch.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
America's Made For TV Snack
Orville Redenbacher's new, corny, but perfectly awesome tagline.
"America's Made For TV Snack."
That's Right,
HMK
"America's Made For TV Snack."
That's Right,
HMK
Monday, August 01, 2005
Tang: There's a new space drink in town!
The Big Gulp
NASA pisses away millions hauling H2O into orbit. But there's a better way - recycle astronaut urine. Just one question: How does it taste?
By Tom McNichol
People head to Reno for all sorts of reasons. Some want to gamble. Others are looking for a hasty wedding or quickie divorce. I've come to the Biggest Little City in the World to drink my own pee. Not straight up, of course. First, I'll run it through a new NASA water purification system that collects astronaut sweat, moisture from respiration, drain water, and urine - and turns it all into drinking water.
NASA desperately needs this technology. Water makes for a heavy - and expensive - payload. Over the past five years, the agency has spent $60 million delivering potable water to the International Space Station on the space shuttle (6 tons at a cost of about $40,000 per gallon). Deploying the Water Recovery System on the ISS will cut the volume of water hauled into space by two-thirds and free up enough room on the shuttle for four more astronauts.
I'm in Reno because this is the home of Water Security, a new company that is finding ways to use the NASA technology in extreme environments here on Earth. Company president Ray Doane can't wait to show me his magic box. "This is whiz-bang technology," he boasts, with an emphasis on the whiz.
Water Security has added a special filter to the NASA unit, creating a system that can scrub away 99.9 percent of all waterborne viruses, which could prove particularly useful in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that more than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and that 10 million die each year as a result of contaminated water supplies and inadequate sanitation.
The six-stage system starts with a prefilter that removes large particles of sediment and debris, such as hair or lint, from contaminated liquid. Next, a carbon filter strips out the organic waste products contained in urine, like urea, uric acid, and creatinine, as well as pesticides and herbicides, which frequently leech into water supplies from farmland. The liquid then flushes through a cartridge developed by Water Security that contains tiny black beads of iodinated resins. Any microorganisms collide with the beads, which release iodine to kill the bugs.
"The iodine is released gradually into the water and is very stable over a wide range of temperatures and pHs," company vice president Ken Kearney says. "It's very predictable, and that's what you want in space. It can also take some of the dirtiest, nastiest water on the planet and produce clean, safe drinking water."
The water lingers briefly in a holding tank to give the iodine enough contact time for a complete kill. Next, a resin filter strips out the iodine, along with nitrates and heavy metals. Finally, the water moves through a filter that eliminates cryptosporidium (a waterborne parasite that's resistant to iodine) and provides a final "polish" for good taste.
At least that's what they tell me. A Water Security system is set up here at company headquarters, ready to be put to my own uric acid test. A big yellow bucket next to the unit is filled with water and then tainted with "Arizona dust," a common contaminant used by laboratories. I discreetly retire to a side office and emerge clutching a warm plastic cup. I pour the urine into the yellow bucket, taking care not to splash. The chemist stirs the brew with a long stick.
Human waste has bedeviled NASA engineers from the get-go. Alan Shepherd's first 15-minute suborbital flight was so short that no one thought to install a urine receptacle in his space suit. At T-minus 15 minutes, an electrical problem caused an 86-minute delay on the launchpad. Shepherd's bladder soon reached the bursting point, and he radioed the first-ever "Houston, we have a problem" message. After some deliberation, mission control had an answer: "Do it in the suit."
Gemini and Apollo astronauts wore plastic bags taped to their buttocks. After defecation, the crew member was required to seal the bag and knead it, mixing in a liquid-bactericide to provide the desired degree of "feces stabilization." The first men to walk on the moon stepped onto the lunar surface wearing astrodiapers - undershorts layered with absorbent material. Which may explain all the jumping up and down.
As a 1975 NASA study put it, "In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks." For the space shuttle, the agency designed a $23 million toilet that freeze-dries solid waste so it can be transported back to Earth. Until recently, the gray water was dumped overboard, becoming an orbiting monument to mankind.
The water filtration system allows NASA to solve two problems at once. It eliminates the gray water disposal issue and recycles urine into drinking water for the astronauts. The agency is testing the system at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama - where employees run on treadmills as their sweat, respiratory moisture, and urine are collected, cleansed and consumed.
Water Security has already begun putting the technology to work in areas where freshwater is in short supply. This summer, global relief agency Concern for Kids deployed a foot-powered purification unit in northern Iraq. Robert and Roni Anderson, Concern's founders, loaded it onto the back of a Toyota pickup and drove to dozens of villages to purify their groundwater. The unit pumps out 5 gallons per minute, and a single day of purification can sustain a village of 5,000 people for a month. The cost is about 3 cents a gallon. Iraqi water companies, by comparison, charge $4 a gallon.
It's not just war-torn regions that are short on potable water. After the tsunami hit Indonesia last December, much of the freshwater supply became contaminated with salt water and toxic street runoff. Kearney says the Water Security system is perfectly capable of working in such natural-disaster scenarios. After all, the technology was originally tested on an open sewage ditch in Jakarta and produced water that met Environmental Protection Agency standards.
Back at Water Security HQ, the contents of the bucket get a final stir, and the experiment begins. The water is sucked through an intake hose and into the purification system - prefilter, carbon filter, iodinated resin, disinfectant holding tank, iodine scrub, and a polish. (Don't be shy with the polish, guys.)
After 30 seconds, water dribbles out of a nozzle and into a plastic cup. I raise it with a trembling hand. A toast to Alan Shepherd and all the brave astronauts who endured the wrong stuff in their space suits for the advancement of science: This number one's for you. I take a big astronaut gulp, lower the cup, and wait for the noxious aftertaste. Nothing.
The water tastes pretty good - it's definitely not Evian, but it is better than most city tap. Certainly more palatable than many light beers I've had, and not at all, uh, urinous. Move over,
Tang: There's a new space drink in town!
Thanks to Tom McNichol (mcnichol@pacbell.net)
NASA pisses away millions hauling H2O into orbit. But there's a better way - recycle astronaut urine. Just one question: How does it taste?
By Tom McNichol
People head to Reno for all sorts of reasons. Some want to gamble. Others are looking for a hasty wedding or quickie divorce. I've come to the Biggest Little City in the World to drink my own pee. Not straight up, of course. First, I'll run it through a new NASA water purification system that collects astronaut sweat, moisture from respiration, drain water, and urine - and turns it all into drinking water.
NASA desperately needs this technology. Water makes for a heavy - and expensive - payload. Over the past five years, the agency has spent $60 million delivering potable water to the International Space Station on the space shuttle (6 tons at a cost of about $40,000 per gallon). Deploying the Water Recovery System on the ISS will cut the volume of water hauled into space by two-thirds and free up enough room on the shuttle for four more astronauts.
I'm in Reno because this is the home of Water Security, a new company that is finding ways to use the NASA technology in extreme environments here on Earth. Company president Ray Doane can't wait to show me his magic box. "This is whiz-bang technology," he boasts, with an emphasis on the whiz.
Water Security has added a special filter to the NASA unit, creating a system that can scrub away 99.9 percent of all waterborne viruses, which could prove particularly useful in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that more than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and that 10 million die each year as a result of contaminated water supplies and inadequate sanitation.
The six-stage system starts with a prefilter that removes large particles of sediment and debris, such as hair or lint, from contaminated liquid. Next, a carbon filter strips out the organic waste products contained in urine, like urea, uric acid, and creatinine, as well as pesticides and herbicides, which frequently leech into water supplies from farmland. The liquid then flushes through a cartridge developed by Water Security that contains tiny black beads of iodinated resins. Any microorganisms collide with the beads, which release iodine to kill the bugs.
"The iodine is released gradually into the water and is very stable over a wide range of temperatures and pHs," company vice president Ken Kearney says. "It's very predictable, and that's what you want in space. It can also take some of the dirtiest, nastiest water on the planet and produce clean, safe drinking water."
The water lingers briefly in a holding tank to give the iodine enough contact time for a complete kill. Next, a resin filter strips out the iodine, along with nitrates and heavy metals. Finally, the water moves through a filter that eliminates cryptosporidium (a waterborne parasite that's resistant to iodine) and provides a final "polish" for good taste.
At least that's what they tell me. A Water Security system is set up here at company headquarters, ready to be put to my own uric acid test. A big yellow bucket next to the unit is filled with water and then tainted with "Arizona dust," a common contaminant used by laboratories. I discreetly retire to a side office and emerge clutching a warm plastic cup. I pour the urine into the yellow bucket, taking care not to splash. The chemist stirs the brew with a long stick.
Human waste has bedeviled NASA engineers from the get-go. Alan Shepherd's first 15-minute suborbital flight was so short that no one thought to install a urine receptacle in his space suit. At T-minus 15 minutes, an electrical problem caused an 86-minute delay on the launchpad. Shepherd's bladder soon reached the bursting point, and he radioed the first-ever "Houston, we have a problem" message. After some deliberation, mission control had an answer: "Do it in the suit."
Gemini and Apollo astronauts wore plastic bags taped to their buttocks. After defecation, the crew member was required to seal the bag and knead it, mixing in a liquid-bactericide to provide the desired degree of "feces stabilization." The first men to walk on the moon stepped onto the lunar surface wearing astrodiapers - undershorts layered with absorbent material. Which may explain all the jumping up and down.
As a 1975 NASA study put it, "In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks." For the space shuttle, the agency designed a $23 million toilet that freeze-dries solid waste so it can be transported back to Earth. Until recently, the gray water was dumped overboard, becoming an orbiting monument to mankind.
The water filtration system allows NASA to solve two problems at once. It eliminates the gray water disposal issue and recycles urine into drinking water for the astronauts. The agency is testing the system at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama - where employees run on treadmills as their sweat, respiratory moisture, and urine are collected, cleansed and consumed.
Water Security has already begun putting the technology to work in areas where freshwater is in short supply. This summer, global relief agency Concern for Kids deployed a foot-powered purification unit in northern Iraq. Robert and Roni Anderson, Concern's founders, loaded it onto the back of a Toyota pickup and drove to dozens of villages to purify their groundwater. The unit pumps out 5 gallons per minute, and a single day of purification can sustain a village of 5,000 people for a month. The cost is about 3 cents a gallon. Iraqi water companies, by comparison, charge $4 a gallon.
It's not just war-torn regions that are short on potable water. After the tsunami hit Indonesia last December, much of the freshwater supply became contaminated with salt water and toxic street runoff. Kearney says the Water Security system is perfectly capable of working in such natural-disaster scenarios. After all, the technology was originally tested on an open sewage ditch in Jakarta and produced water that met Environmental Protection Agency standards.
Back at Water Security HQ, the contents of the bucket get a final stir, and the experiment begins. The water is sucked through an intake hose and into the purification system - prefilter, carbon filter, iodinated resin, disinfectant holding tank, iodine scrub, and a polish. (Don't be shy with the polish, guys.)
After 30 seconds, water dribbles out of a nozzle and into a plastic cup. I raise it with a trembling hand. A toast to Alan Shepherd and all the brave astronauts who endured the wrong stuff in their space suits for the advancement of science: This number one's for you. I take a big astronaut gulp, lower the cup, and wait for the noxious aftertaste. Nothing.
The water tastes pretty good - it's definitely not Evian, but it is better than most city tap. Certainly more palatable than many light beers I've had, and not at all, uh, urinous. Move over,
Tang: There's a new space drink in town!
Thanks to Tom McNichol (mcnichol@pacbell.net)
Friday, July 29, 2005
Podcasting: Now Hear This
In One Stroke, Podcasting Hits Mainstream
EVER since Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997 after a 12-year absence, his company has thrived by executing the same essential formula over and over: Find an exciting new technology whose complexity and cost keep it out of the average person's life. Streamline it, mainstream it, strip away the geeky options. Take the credit.
So far, Apple has worked this kind of magic on digital video editing, wireless networking, online music selling, R.S.S. feeds (a kind of Web site subscription) and other technologies. Its latest attempt, however, will be music to an awful lot of ears. With its release of the free iTunes 4.9 software for Mac and Windows, Apple has just mainstreamed podcasting.
A podcast, as anyone under 25 can tell you, is an audio recording posted online, much like a short radio show. ("Podcasting" is a pun on "broadcasting," implying, of course, that you listen to it on your iPod or another music player.) The beauty of a podcast is that it's free and you listen to it whenever you like. And there are more than 7,000 podcasts "on the air" right now, on every conceivable topic. Their quantity and variety already dwarf what you can find on regular radio.
What makes podcasting a national dinnertime conversation these days, though, is that anyone can make one. You just need a microphone, a sound-recording program, and the tutorials that have already appeared at many points on the Web, including apple.com/podcasting.
Yes, some are corporate broadcasts, repurposed shows from traditional radio shows. But the real fun is finding the homemade ones, the amateur attempts made in somebody's basement with a laptop and a microphone. These can be unpolished and quirky, with plenty of dead air and "ums," but that's their charm. Podcasts, in other words, are the audio version of blogs - the Web logs, or daily text postings, that made up last year's hot dinnertime conversation.
Until Apple got its mitts on podcasting, the finding, sampling and managing of podcast audio files was time-consuming and scattered. First you had to find a podcast worth listening to, using directories like www.podcast.net or www.podcastalley.com. Then you had to find, download and (in some cases) pay for a podcast-management program like iPodder (for Mac, Windows or Linux).
Three things give iTunes 4.9 enough heft to bring podcasts to the people. First, it manages the complete chain of podcasting command - finding podcasts, subscribing to them and transferring them to your iPod - beautifully and simply. Second, it's free. Third, it already has a vast following; millions of people already use iTunes to manage their music collections and iPods. Adding podcasts to that work flow feels like a natural evolution.
To get to the podcast selection screen, you open iTunes and click the Music Store icon. (Oddly, you don't click the new Podcasts icon. Doing that shows you the list of podcasts you've subscribed to so far, so it's empty the first time you try this experiment.)
Here you can see featured icons for new spoken podcasts, music podcasts, indie podcasts, and so on. There's also a list of podcast categories, a Search box (which works either by show name or by podcaster's name), and a Top 20 Podcasts list.
This is a coveted list to be on. Once you're on the Top 20 list or even the Top 100 list, your popularity benefits from a delicious cycle, because thousands more people will find your show and give it a listen. The Top 20 list usually includes the professional programming from National Public Radio and CNN, technology shows like Leo Laporte's TWIT (This Week in Tech), and, inevitably, the occasional sex-talk show. (Oh, yes - podcasts can be off-color. Hundreds of them bear the label "Explicit" on iTunes, and those are just the episodes that Apple noticed or was made aware of by users.)
Spot No. 1, though, is often occupied by something called iTunes New Music Tuesday, an Apple-produced show whose D.J. introduces and plays the latest pop music. It's a so-called enhanced podcast, a format that displays slideshow-like graphics at relevant points in the audio. These images appear right in iTunes (in the cover-art area) and even on the iPod itself, if it has a color screen. Cheerful geeks have already hijacked this feature to create, for example, podcasts that walk you through various acts of PC surgery, with photos popping up to accompany the spoken instructions.
To sample a podcast on iTunes, you click its name. A new screen appears, listing the last few episodes. A double-click starts playback. If you like what you hear, you can click Get Episode to copy the audio file to your computer, where you can either listen to it or have it transferred automatically to your iPod or iPod Mini. (If you have an iPod Shuffle or another brand of music player, the transfer isn't automatic; you must drag the podcasts onto the player's icon each time.)
And if you really like what you hear, you can click Subscribe. Now your iPod will always be loaded up with the very latest episodes, without any further work on your part. Pleasant touches abound: for example, the iPod remembers where you stopped listening to each podcast so you can pick up again later. And if you keep transferring a certain podcast series to the iPod without ever listening to it, iTunes politely notices and invites you to unsubscribe.
Apple clearly considers podcasting an important new audio format - so important, in fact, that you can't even hide the Podcasts icon in the iTunes music-source list (as you can the Music Store, Radio and Party Shuffle icons). Company executives must be ecstatic that the masses have adopted the term "podcasting" itself, evoking Apple's most popular product name with every utterance. (Makers of rival players, on the other hand, must be gnashing their teeth and every other body part. According to an article in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in fact, Microsoft employees are pointedly using the unappetizing term "blogcast," just so they won't have to say or type the word Pod.)
The big question is, why is Apple working so hard to claim the podcast phenomenon as its own? After all, the company doesn't make any money when you listen to or subscribe to a podcast. The Price column in iTunes says Free for every single podcast, and Apple says it has no intention of changing that.
Clearly, the motivation behind Apple's podcasting program is selling more iPods. You can certainly get podcasts onto other music players, but not with the effortless, automated flow of the iTunes-iPod system.
In other words, these free podcasts are just another feather in the iPod's cap. As an editorial at daringfireball.net astutely observed, Apple is flipping the traditional business plan on its head. It's giving away the razor blades, but selling a staggering number of razors.
Not everybody is happy with Apple's podcasting ecosystem, by the way. Geeks have griped that, unlike other podcast programs, iTunes doesn't speed up downloads using high-tech tricks with names like ETags, compression and "last modified" headers. Early podcasters complain about the growing presence of the slick corporate 'casts, claiming that they're ruining the grass-roots, power-to-the-people feeling of the original podcasts.
And, of course, there's the perpetual wheel-squeaking of long-time iPod haters, who feel suffocated by the whole astonishing iPod juggernaut. They can only resent Apple's success in bringing podcasting to the masses with its own stamp all over it.
But all of that is whimpering in the wind. Overnight, iTunes 4.9 has already become the most popular podcast-management software on earth; Apple says that within 48 hours of its release, Pod people had subscribed to more than a million podcasts. Pockets of the populace may not enjoy the transformation of podcasting into a commercial, pop-culture phenomenon, but it's too late now. The people have spoken - or, rather, listened.
Thanks to David Pouge
pogue@nytimes.com
EVER since Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997 after a 12-year absence, his company has thrived by executing the same essential formula over and over: Find an exciting new technology whose complexity and cost keep it out of the average person's life. Streamline it, mainstream it, strip away the geeky options. Take the credit.
So far, Apple has worked this kind of magic on digital video editing, wireless networking, online music selling, R.S.S. feeds (a kind of Web site subscription) and other technologies. Its latest attempt, however, will be music to an awful lot of ears. With its release of the free iTunes 4.9 software for Mac and Windows, Apple has just mainstreamed podcasting.
A podcast, as anyone under 25 can tell you, is an audio recording posted online, much like a short radio show. ("Podcasting" is a pun on "broadcasting," implying, of course, that you listen to it on your iPod or another music player.) The beauty of a podcast is that it's free and you listen to it whenever you like. And there are more than 7,000 podcasts "on the air" right now, on every conceivable topic. Their quantity and variety already dwarf what you can find on regular radio.
What makes podcasting a national dinnertime conversation these days, though, is that anyone can make one. You just need a microphone, a sound-recording program, and the tutorials that have already appeared at many points on the Web, including apple.com/podcasting.
Yes, some are corporate broadcasts, repurposed shows from traditional radio shows. But the real fun is finding the homemade ones, the amateur attempts made in somebody's basement with a laptop and a microphone. These can be unpolished and quirky, with plenty of dead air and "ums," but that's their charm. Podcasts, in other words, are the audio version of blogs - the Web logs, or daily text postings, that made up last year's hot dinnertime conversation.
Until Apple got its mitts on podcasting, the finding, sampling and managing of podcast audio files was time-consuming and scattered. First you had to find a podcast worth listening to, using directories like www.podcast.net or www.podcastalley.com. Then you had to find, download and (in some cases) pay for a podcast-management program like iPodder (for Mac, Windows or Linux).
Three things give iTunes 4.9 enough heft to bring podcasts to the people. First, it manages the complete chain of podcasting command - finding podcasts, subscribing to them and transferring them to your iPod - beautifully and simply. Second, it's free. Third, it already has a vast following; millions of people already use iTunes to manage their music collections and iPods. Adding podcasts to that work flow feels like a natural evolution.
To get to the podcast selection screen, you open iTunes and click the Music Store icon. (Oddly, you don't click the new Podcasts icon. Doing that shows you the list of podcasts you've subscribed to so far, so it's empty the first time you try this experiment.)
Here you can see featured icons for new spoken podcasts, music podcasts, indie podcasts, and so on. There's also a list of podcast categories, a Search box (which works either by show name or by podcaster's name), and a Top 20 Podcasts list.
This is a coveted list to be on. Once you're on the Top 20 list or even the Top 100 list, your popularity benefits from a delicious cycle, because thousands more people will find your show and give it a listen. The Top 20 list usually includes the professional programming from National Public Radio and CNN, technology shows like Leo Laporte's TWIT (This Week in Tech), and, inevitably, the occasional sex-talk show. (Oh, yes - podcasts can be off-color. Hundreds of them bear the label "Explicit" on iTunes, and those are just the episodes that Apple noticed or was made aware of by users.)
Spot No. 1, though, is often occupied by something called iTunes New Music Tuesday, an Apple-produced show whose D.J. introduces and plays the latest pop music. It's a so-called enhanced podcast, a format that displays slideshow-like graphics at relevant points in the audio. These images appear right in iTunes (in the cover-art area) and even on the iPod itself, if it has a color screen. Cheerful geeks have already hijacked this feature to create, for example, podcasts that walk you through various acts of PC surgery, with photos popping up to accompany the spoken instructions.
To sample a podcast on iTunes, you click its name. A new screen appears, listing the last few episodes. A double-click starts playback. If you like what you hear, you can click Get Episode to copy the audio file to your computer, where you can either listen to it or have it transferred automatically to your iPod or iPod Mini. (If you have an iPod Shuffle or another brand of music player, the transfer isn't automatic; you must drag the podcasts onto the player's icon each time.)
And if you really like what you hear, you can click Subscribe. Now your iPod will always be loaded up with the very latest episodes, without any further work on your part. Pleasant touches abound: for example, the iPod remembers where you stopped listening to each podcast so you can pick up again later. And if you keep transferring a certain podcast series to the iPod without ever listening to it, iTunes politely notices and invites you to unsubscribe.
Apple clearly considers podcasting an important new audio format - so important, in fact, that you can't even hide the Podcasts icon in the iTunes music-source list (as you can the Music Store, Radio and Party Shuffle icons). Company executives must be ecstatic that the masses have adopted the term "podcasting" itself, evoking Apple's most popular product name with every utterance. (Makers of rival players, on the other hand, must be gnashing their teeth and every other body part. According to an article in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in fact, Microsoft employees are pointedly using the unappetizing term "blogcast," just so they won't have to say or type the word Pod.)
The big question is, why is Apple working so hard to claim the podcast phenomenon as its own? After all, the company doesn't make any money when you listen to or subscribe to a podcast. The Price column in iTunes says Free for every single podcast, and Apple says it has no intention of changing that.
Clearly, the motivation behind Apple's podcasting program is selling more iPods. You can certainly get podcasts onto other music players, but not with the effortless, automated flow of the iTunes-iPod system.
In other words, these free podcasts are just another feather in the iPod's cap. As an editorial at daringfireball.net astutely observed, Apple is flipping the traditional business plan on its head. It's giving away the razor blades, but selling a staggering number of razors.
Not everybody is happy with Apple's podcasting ecosystem, by the way. Geeks have griped that, unlike other podcast programs, iTunes doesn't speed up downloads using high-tech tricks with names like ETags, compression and "last modified" headers. Early podcasters complain about the growing presence of the slick corporate 'casts, claiming that they're ruining the grass-roots, power-to-the-people feeling of the original podcasts.
And, of course, there's the perpetual wheel-squeaking of long-time iPod haters, who feel suffocated by the whole astonishing iPod juggernaut. They can only resent Apple's success in bringing podcasting to the masses with its own stamp all over it.
But all of that is whimpering in the wind. Overnight, iTunes 4.9 has already become the most popular podcast-management software on earth; Apple says that within 48 hours of its release, Pod people had subscribed to more than a million podcasts. Pockets of the populace may not enjoy the transformation of podcasting into a commercial, pop-culture phenomenon, but it's too late now. The people have spoken - or, rather, listened.
Thanks to David Pouge
pogue@nytimes.com
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
The Low Down On Downloads
People who illegally share music files online are also big spenders on legal music downloads, research suggests.
Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans. Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.
According to the music industry, legal downloads have tripled during 2005. In the first half of 2005, some 10 million songs have been legally downloaded.
Music 'myth'
More needs to be done to capitalise on the power of the peer-to-peer networks that many music downloaders still use, said the report's authors. There's a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music
Paul Brindley, The Leading Question
The study found that regular downloaders of unlicensed music spent an average of £5.52 a month on legal digital music. This compares to just £1.27 spent by other music fans. "The research clearly shows that music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers," said Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question. "It also points out that they are eager to adopt legitimate music services in the future."
"There's a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music." In reality hardcore fans "are extremely enthusiastic" about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling, he said.
Carrot and stick
The BPI (British Phonographic Industry) welcomed the findings but added a note of caution. "It's encouraging that many illegal file-sharers are starting to use legal services," said BPI spokesman Matt Philips. "But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study. "The consensus among independent research is that a third of illegal file-sharers may buy more music and around two thirds buy less. "That two-thirds tends to include people who were the heaviest buyers which is why we need to continue our carrot and stick approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing," he said.
Music To Go
The Leading Question survey also asked 600 music fans what devices they would be buying in the next year. One of the challenges will be to develop the perception of the phone as a credible entertainment device. A third planned to buy a dedicated MP3 player, while just 8% said they would be buying an MP3-enabled phone.
Reasons cited for not purchasing a music playing phone included worries about battery life and concerns about losing the handset, and potentially their music collection. The fact that phones tend to be frequently replaced also meant people had a low emotional attachment to them.
"The phone is not ready to replace the iPod as a serious digital music player just yet," said Tim Walker, director of The Leading Question. "One of the challenges will be to develop the perception of the phone as a credible entertainment device," he said. Providers need to look at features such as dual download to mobile and PC, back-up facilities and improved interfaces between PC and mobile, he said.
There is a huge potential market for MP3 phones. The survey found that 38% were interested in downloading full tracks to their mobile phones. And people are happy with the storage possibilities of phones with only 4% wanting to store more than 1,000 songs to take on holiday.
Story from BBC NEWS
Published: 2005/07/27 08:10:56 GMT
That's Right 2005 © BBC MMV
Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans. Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.
According to the music industry, legal downloads have tripled during 2005. In the first half of 2005, some 10 million songs have been legally downloaded.
Music 'myth'
More needs to be done to capitalise on the power of the peer-to-peer networks that many music downloaders still use, said the report's authors. There's a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music
Paul Brindley, The Leading Question
The study found that regular downloaders of unlicensed music spent an average of £5.52 a month on legal digital music. This compares to just £1.27 spent by other music fans. "The research clearly shows that music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers," said Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question. "It also points out that they are eager to adopt legitimate music services in the future."
"There's a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music." In reality hardcore fans "are extremely enthusiastic" about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling, he said.
Carrot and stick
The BPI (British Phonographic Industry) welcomed the findings but added a note of caution. "It's encouraging that many illegal file-sharers are starting to use legal services," said BPI spokesman Matt Philips. "But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study. "The consensus among independent research is that a third of illegal file-sharers may buy more music and around two thirds buy less. "That two-thirds tends to include people who were the heaviest buyers which is why we need to continue our carrot and stick approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing," he said.
Music To Go
The Leading Question survey also asked 600 music fans what devices they would be buying in the next year. One of the challenges will be to develop the perception of the phone as a credible entertainment device. A third planned to buy a dedicated MP3 player, while just 8% said they would be buying an MP3-enabled phone.
Reasons cited for not purchasing a music playing phone included worries about battery life and concerns about losing the handset, and potentially their music collection. The fact that phones tend to be frequently replaced also meant people had a low emotional attachment to them.
"The phone is not ready to replace the iPod as a serious digital music player just yet," said Tim Walker, director of The Leading Question. "One of the challenges will be to develop the perception of the phone as a credible entertainment device," he said. Providers need to look at features such as dual download to mobile and PC, back-up facilities and improved interfaces between PC and mobile, he said.
There is a huge potential market for MP3 phones. The survey found that 38% were interested in downloading full tracks to their mobile phones. And people are happy with the storage possibilities of phones with only 4% wanting to store more than 1,000 songs to take on holiday.
Story from BBC NEWS
Published: 2005/07/27 08:10:56 GMT
That's Right 2005 © BBC MMV
Monday, July 25, 2005
Spectacular Sunrises & Sunsets!
A satellite photo shows the dust cloud off the Atlantic coast of Africa on July 19.Large Dust Cloud Heads to U.S.
MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- An enormous, hazy cloud of dust from the Sahara Desert is blowing toward the southern United States, but meteorologists do not expect much effect beyond colorful sunsets.
The leading edge of the cloud -- nearly the size of the continental United States -- should move across Florida sometime from Monday through Wednesday.
"This is not going to be a tremendous event, but it will be kind of interesting," said Jim Lushine, a severe weather expert with the National Weather Service in Miami.
He said the dust could make sunrises and sunsets spectacular.
It might not have much effect on the rest of the country, said Scott Kelly, a meteorologist with the weather service in Melbourne.
"Maybe south Texas or Mexico if that dust cloud keeps moving westward, but nothing north of Florida, unless a weather system can dive southward and pull that air northward," he said.
Such dust clouds are not uncommon, especially at this time of year. They start when weather patterns called tropical waves pick up dust from the desert in North Africa, carry it a couple of miles into the atmosphere and drift westward.
If the dust is concentrated enough, it could create some problems for people with respiratory problems, said Ken Larson, a natural resource specialist with the Broward County Environmental Protection Department.
"If somebody is subject to a respiratory condition, if they see hazy skies, they might want to take a little more precaution, not participate in strenuous activity and stay indoors," Larson said.
Thanks to CNN, NASA & AP.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Is there supposed to be something special here?
In Search of the Characters of New York
By RANDY KENNEDY
If you are not the sort of person who cares deeply about the Old World subtleties of Fournier, the retro-hipster swirl of Ministry Script or the plain-vanilla, rock-ribbed dependability of Helvetica - nor the sort immediately able to identify the typeface you are reading right now as 8.7-point Imperial - then you were probably not aware that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg declared this week Type Week in New York City.
You also might have assumed that a group of a dozen people wandering around the Upper East Side on Thursday morning, snapping pictures of the unremarkable words "Public School 6" inscribed into stone above an unremarkable red door on East 81st Street were tourists in possession of a badly translated guidebook.
But they were actually admiring the inscription on purpose, remarking on its clean Bauhaus roots. And a few blocks away, they gave the third degree to the neo-Roman letters carved along the top of Regis High School.
"The 'R' is too small in the bowl, and too long in the leg," complained Paul Shaw, a New York type designer and calligrapher who was leading the group on what he called a letter-form tour of Manhattan, with stops to take in the Art Deco Bloomingdale's sign, the sputnik-esque Frank Lloyd Wright letters on the Guggenheim Museum and the work of Bruce Rogers, a demigod of American book design, in the form of a huge Emerson quotation adorning a wall of Hunter College.
These pilgrims were among about 500 people, some from as far away as Brazil and Finland, who have converged on the city for TypeCon, a yearly gathering of typographers, printers, designers, calligraphers and assorted, self-described font freaks and type nerds who can argue about kerning into the wee hours.
If nothing else, TypeCon, now in its eighth year, sets out to prove that the typographical crowd, despite its two-dimensional obsessions, can partake in all the three-dimensional joys of any conventioneers. The activities include a film festival (sample past title: "Helvetica It Hurts"), a citywide typographic scavenger hunt with cash prizes and even a temporary radio station, set up inside the Parsons School of Design on West 12th Street. ("Type is speech on paper," the station's slogan goes. "Typeradio is speech on type." The D.J.'s say, however, that it has not proved particularly exciting to talk about type, so conversation on the station, accessible on the Web at www.typeradio.org, has tended toward music, food and sex.)
"We do compare this to a Trekkie convention sometimes," said Tamye Riggs, the executive director of the Society of Typographic Aficionados, which organized the event. "People can get really obsessed about it."
But type types don't wear costumes like Trekkies or Civil War re-enactors. Instead, they often wear really cool T-shirts and designer eyeglasses and hand out exquisitely designed business cards on heavy card stock. Their conversation can quickly descend into the slightly self-satisfied jargon of any specialty, with talk of uncial script, ligatures and serif slants, along with frequent references to Trajan's Column in Rome, an ancient source of Western letter forms.
But unlike many kinds of buffs, they are quick to try to share their enthusiasm and knowledge with even the most ill-informed typographical philistine (who has never changed the typeface on his word-processing program and had no idea until he looked it up yesterday that his newspaper's body type was 8.7-point Imperial.)
"Bloomies!" Mr. Shaw exclaimed, raising both his hands like a religious supplicant as he emerged from a subway staircase on Thursday morning and caught sight of the Bloomingdale's sign, with its boxy letters, ended by a cartoonlike "s" that seems to have wandered over from a Disney movie.
"The 's' is so funky," said Craig Brown, a New Jersey graphic designer, who took the tour with others from San Francisco, SĂ£o Paulo, Calgary, Pensacola, Fla., and Redding, England. "It's so out of place."
Mr. Shaw, bearded, with long graying hair and the zeal of the Ancient Mariner, led his followers at a furious pace from the Guggenheim all the way down to Madison Square Park, dipping in and out of the subway, where he showed examples of weird serifs in the tile work (the serifs on the middle bars of the "e's" on signs along the Lexington line lean from left to right, an odd variation that seems to connote speed), and revealed little-known subterranean typographical mistakes.
"Some of the 'h's' in the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn are upside down," he said. "The crossbar is in the wrong position. I think the workers had a drawing from the engineer, but - hey - they're working with tile and sometimes they were one line off."
At times on Thursday, passers-by would stop and stare, too, trying to figure out what all these serious-looking people were looking at. In front of Public School 6, a man paused, squinted at the red door and its seemingly prosaic inscription and then shook his head.
"Is there supposed to be something special here?" he asked.
Thanks to The New York Times Company Copyright 2005
Friday, July 22, 2005
Choosing The Right iPod
In the beginning (OK, in 2001), there was the original 5GB iPod—and we were lucky to have it. But in the past four years, Apple has made things a bit more complicated, adding several new members to the iPod family. Not too long ago, making an iPod-buying decision boiled down to exactly one factor: whether you had the money to pay for it.
Now that Apple offers three versions of its diminutive music player—the iPod shuffle, the iPod mini, and the color iPod (including the iPod U2 Special Edition and most HP-branded models)—at prices ranging from $99 to $400, there’s far more to consider. Will a small iPod or a large iPod serve you better? And is there any advantage to owning Apple’s iPod instead of one branded with the HP logo? I’ve had my hands on every iPod model Apple has released, so I’m in a unique position to give advice on finding the iPod that’ll be the best fit for you.
iPod with color display
Not long ago Apple offered the fourth-generation iPod—a model with monochrome display—and a separate iPod photo, an iPod that could not only play music, but display color pictures on the iPod’s screen as well as project those pictures to an attached television or projector. In June 2005, Apple brought color to all its full-sized iPods (the iPod U2 Special Edition included) and dropped the “photo” appendage from the iPod’s name.
The name change doesn’t mean that the iPod has lost any of its photo capabilities. As with the earlier iPod photo, you can use Apple’s $30 iPod Camera Connector accessory to load pictures from a digital camera onto the iPod without having to first process them in iTunes. (Normally, you need to load your pictures onto your Mac or PC, where iTunes processes them for iPod compatibility, and then run a sync to download them to your iPod.) The iPod with color display can also take advantage of the Apple iPod AV Cable (now a $19 accessory) to connect the iPod to a television or projector.
People who don’t need this iPod’s photo features shouldn’t dismiss it too quickly. Even though its photo capabilities are its most glamorous feature, the addition of color improves everything about the iPod’s interface. Calendar events are far easier to differentiate, Solitaire is finally playable (because with color you can tell one suit from another more easily), and color album art is just cool no matter how you look at it.
While the iPod with color display offers more storage than the iPod mini (offering capacities of 20- and 60GB versus the mini’s 4- and 6GB hard drive capacity), it takes an hour longer to fully charge than the mini (five hours versus four for the mini) and offers less skip-protection—providing up to 17 minutes of protection versus up to 25 minutes for the mini. It also offers less playtime-per-charge (Apple rates the iPod’s playtime at up to 15 hours of music playback and up to 5 hours of slideshow playtime though we’ve managed over 17 hours of playtime on a color iPod when pressing play and walking away). But this iPod boasts a larger display, which allows you to view three lines of text on the Now Playing screen as compared to the two lines displayed by the mini (and zero lines of text shown on the display-less iPod shuffle).
These iPods have all the music and storage features switched on—unlike the mini and the shuffle, this iPod allows you to record voice memos with a third-party voice recorder such as Griffin Technology’s $40 iTalk or Belkin’s $50 Voice Recorder for iPod with Dock Connector. You can also store and view digital pictures on the iPod with Belkin’s $50 Media Reader for iPod with Dock Connector (Belkin’s $40 Digital Camera Link for iPod with Dock Connector will download pictures to the iPod but you can’t view them without first processing them through iTunes).
The HP iPod models—called Apple iPod + HP—differ slightly from Apple’s offerings. As I write this, HP still offers a 20GB monochrome iPod priced at $300. It will also sell you a 30GB color model for $350 plus its own 60GB color iPod that’s identical to Apple’s offering except for the two companies’ warranty support.
Specifically, Apple provides a one-year warranty but only 90 days of free phone support; it further restricts those terms in that all repairs after the first six months require a $30 shipping and handling fee, and the free phone support applies to only one incident within the first 90 days after purchase. HP, on the other hand, provides a full year of both hardware warranty and phone support, with toll-free technical support available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. HP also provides out-of-warranty support via e-mail. HP provides support only for Windows-formatted iPods, however.
If history tells us anything, HP’s models will soon match Apple’s lineup.
Capacity and Price 20GB (approximately 5,000 songs), $299; 60GB (approximately 15,000 songs), $399; iPod U2 Special Edition 20GB (approximately 5,000 songs), $329.
Ideal Usage and User If you’re looking for the ultimate in an iPod—a color display, the ability to view and project pictures, a decent amount of playing time, and enough storage for a very large music library—you and the iPod with color display were meant for each other.
iPod mini (second generation)
When Apple first released the iPod mini, the company positioned it as a competitor to other manufacturers’ high-end flash memory-based music players. But it wasn’t long before people forgot all about how the iPod mini compared to the competition and simply thought of it as a great way to shove a thousand tunes into the coolest looking music player on the market. The iPod mini has nearly the same functionality as the original fourth-generation iPod. Its screen is smaller, so it doesn’t display as much information as the larger iPods (the mini’s Now Playing screen, for example, doesn’t display the title of the currently playing album). The screen remains monochrome. And these iPods don’t support voice recording and media storage via third-party peripherals.
When you consider the price-to-storage ratio, the mini isn’t as good a deal as the iPod with color display. Cost per megabyte for the $199 4GB iPod mini is around 5 cents. And a megabyte on a $249 6GB mini costs about 4 cents. Compare this with about 2 cents per megabyte on a $299 20GB iPod, and you see that people who want the most for their money may pass on the mini’s cool exterior and handy size in favor of the higher-capacity iPod.
If you intend to put a lot of hours on your iPod, you’ll find the mini’s playing-time capabilities very attractive. Though Apple suggests that the 2G mini can play for up to 18 hours, I’ve been able to play nonstop music on a 6GB mini for more than 26 hours on a single charge. As I mentioned earlier, the best I’ve done with a color iPod is just over 17 hours.
Capacity and Price 4GB (approximately 1,000 songs), $199; 6GB (approximately 1,500 songs), $249.
Ideal Usage and User The mini, with its vibrant green, blue, pink, or silver case, is Apple’s most fashionable iPod. If you have a sense of style and want to store a goodly number of songs on a small, portable music player, you may just find it hard to resist.
iPod shuffle
Apple’s least-expensive iPod offers a host of advantages: it’s affordable enough to be an impulse buy, it sounds as good as any other iPod, it never skips (because it stores music on solid-state flash memory rather than a moving hard drive), it’s highly portable, and it holds more than enough music to get you through a long drive or a marathon run (though rated at up to 12 hours of play time, it can get much more). It doesn’t, however, include a screen for navigating to specific songs. And its capacity is limited enough that only people with very small music collections will be able to store an entire library on it.
Capacity and Price 512MB (approximately 120 songs), $99; 1GB (approximately 240 songs), $129.
Ideal Usage and User The shuffle’s non-skip nature and small size make it the perfect companion for exercising. And it’s easily cheap enough to become your second, “just kickin’ around” iPod. It’s also a good choice for kids (or adults) who tend to misplace their valuables. (Losing a $99 shuffle is a lot easier to swallow than misplacing a $400 iPod.)
With Thanks to Apple & Christopher Breen
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Tre Bon!
Congratulations to Kaye and Ed on finally closing the deal on their groovy new place south of Paris in the west of France!
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