Down and out in the magic kingdom
Utterly fantastically cool Cory's new book book is downloadable! I started reading yesterday and am already in heaven or should I say in the magic kingdom.SUVs and Terrorism
The perfect answer to the stupid drugs = terrorism ads: SUVs = Terrorism. Here is the NYTimes story about them. (via Aaron Swartz)Some thoughts on the Jobs keynote
I guess three days should be enough to dissipate the reality distortion fields from the MacWorld Keynote. So here is my assessments of the stuff:- Final Cut Express Brilliant move, anyone that has played around with iMovie will want to get their teeth into something a little more powerful but at $1000 final cut is beyond the scope for most people $300 is much more acceptable.
- iPhoto2, iMovie3 and iDVD3 all look like good upgrades and the iLife integration is also a smart move.
- Safari Like almost everyone I surprised apple did not pick the Gecko but after some reading on the web I think this letter to the KDE team and this old post from Dave Hyatt one of the Safari team members and one of the people behind my current favorite browser Chimera reveals the general thinking. Anyway it seems the renderer still has a long way to go and as long as they don't get rid of the Metal look and add tabs I will stick to Chimera.
- Keynote Maybe the most significant announcement of the MacWorld. Keynote could be a the first step in Apple's declaration of independence from Microsoft. Take the horrible PowerPoint and make something that both pro's and beginners can love. By fully leveraging Quartz it looks like they have just done it.
- The 17" PowerBooks What can I say, This is the machine I have dreamed of for years. Now that it is available why am i not going nuts. It's a little bit too expensive and the screen resolution could be higher, everything else is perfect.
- The 12" PowerBooks Also a gorgeous machine but again in my opinion a little flaw in not including DVI video output. This machine combined with one of Apple's beautiful desktop LCD's would have made make a killing.
I need a new backpack...
... a bigger one to fit this. More comments in a while.Corporations right to lie
Interesting historical perspective in this article about Nike's right to lie.Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would "ban monopolies in commerce," making it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, banning them from giving money to politicians or trying to influence elections in any way, restricting corporations to a single business purpose..."Lots of food for thought in this article (via Doc Searls)
In-Room Chat as a Social Tool
What happens if you enable chat software among the participant of a live meeting?The in-room chat created a two-channel experience -- a live conversation in the room, and an overlapping real-time text conversation. The experiment was a strong net positive for the group.
Face lift for the New Year
Finally updated the the design after procrastinating for half a year, Although this design still needs a lot more work it's not as drab as the old one. Apart from the obvious changes, I decided to finally switch to a serif font as browsers are getting better at handling anti-aliasing. I also tightened up the letter spacing in the headlines but will change a bunch of other things in the CSS as I go alongHappy New Year!
Web Design # January 2, 2003 5:08:44 PM CET
2003 the year of the Wiki?
If weblogs were a big thing in 2002 my prediction is that wikis will be the big thing in 2003.Two years ago we set up an intranet that was largely weblog based, although it served our purposes very well there is one big flaw with it. When managing projects there are several types of information you want to convey. One of those is day to day information and for that weblogs are wonderful but for longer term information, things like reference material, procedures and plans, the weblog fails. It's not suited for documents that you constantly amend. But, this is where wikis seem perfectly suited. I say seem because I don't actually have much experience using wikis. I also think that wikis are still maturing and mean different things to different people. In my opinion the three key features in wikis are:
- Wikiwords, although preferably not the UglyAndVeryLongAttachedOnes
- Instant Editing Ability
- Versioning, critical if the wiki is open and editable by anyone
Weblogs as Meta-Search Engines
Philippe Beaudoin put up some really interesting thoughts on weblogsBrowsing weblogs, you're not simply looking-up something, you're looking-up for things that you will want to look-up. In computer science, we name that an "indirection", or an indirect reference. In the context of information gathering I call it "meta-searching".On a related note, This post on how short blocks relate to weblogs is also very interesting. But the best part is the first comment that talks about the chatterbox feature built into this site.
Drop the capital in internet
Of all people I should not be someone that talks about spelling, however I can't resist supporting that internet should lose it's capitalization. Henceforth I'll write internet with a small "i". My spell checker has been updated.A Toast to Moral Clarity
NY Times has thought provoking article about terrorism....New methods of killing people initially provoke outrage but eventually are often accepted. Henry V used longbows at Agincourt, outraging the French. British redcoats marching in neat columns were appalled by sneaky Yankees hiding behind trees. After Guernica, aerial bombing was condemned as barbaric, and in World War II the West condemned Germany's V-1 and V-2 missiles as terror weapons...In my opinion terrorism acts purely on a psychological level. It only works if the media and people let it work. Two weeks after September the 11th I thought the US had won that battle. Now I am no longer sure, the US burned most of their goodwill by acting irrationally towards the international community and by passing laws that contradict what they supposedly are fighting for. (thanks King)
The Sky is no longer the limit.
David reed talks about the non the scarcity of radio bandwidth.The US right now
This perfectly expresses my feelings about the US right now.Tim really gets it!
Piracy is progressive taxation, Where are the Tim O'Reilly of the music business? If there were a couple of Tims in the music and movie business, I am sure we would not have the RIAA and the MPAA trying to arrest evolution and exploiting it instead.Bumper Mentality
I have always been annoyed by people buying SUV's that don't really need it. But this review of High and Mighty sheds some more light on the idiocies of SUV'sThe occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars--8 percent higher in the largest SUVs.But here is where it really get's scary:
Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21.I agree with Kieth Bradsher that forcing SUV owners to pay insurance that is proportional to the accident damages they risk they cause on the road would be a good start, Forcing SUV's to comply with the same safety standards as cars would also be a good idea. But the simplest solution may be war with Irak and the desensitization of oil prices.
