So
Mobile applications have come a long way, but still have plenty of ground to cover. Much of that has to do with the lack of consistency in web sites ability to deal with mobile devices. Google Maps for Mobile is a perfect example. GMM is a slick app that runs on most smart phones. The mapping is fantastic; it's that the linking isn't very well thought out.
For example, using GMM you can find a restaurant near you on the go, but when you try to read a review or other linked info that GMM provides it is often very painful (if it works at all). Sites like Zagat (and others) are still utilizing the tired Flash-encrusted site designs that do not play well on mobile devices. The ironic thing is that Zagat is offering a new mobile site — but GMM is not using this for its links. Perhaps Google could be a little smarter around where they source their linked content when the browser/app is a mobile client.
So
With a growing number of apps on Mac OS X being delivered with Growl notifications, I find myself wishing that the default behavior of growl was not just display only, but something more actionable. That is, I want something like a configurable Growl client that could 'subscribe' to certain Growl notifications (Growl Actions?) and then take action based on them. This would make all of the apps that participate in the scheme much more flexible and powerful using a common mechanism (growl).
For example, if you use Twitter or Jaiku and that client could subscribe to a Growl notification that a batch update to your files in Aperture had just completed and send you a corresponding Twit. Another app might then perform some file housekeeping action based on the same notification having been sent (so one GrowlAction, multiple 'subscribers' take action on it. Some of this could probably be done with Applescript, but using Growl feels like a more open and extensible solution (and keeps it open to our Linux brethren). Heck, this could even lead to Growl-based mashups on your desktop (and beyond).
In conjunction with this concept of Growl Actions, I thought it would be handy to have an app/widget that I call a Growl-er (think flower). This is a circular visual widget that would compactly display received growls; hover over a 'petal' and it would extend out and show more detail about the growl received. When a Growler becomes too cluttered it could 'sprout' another circle to populate.
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Only 7 days left to take advantage of the aptly named Mac Heist where you can get about half a grand of quality Mac software for $49USD. It that isn't cool enough, a chunk of the proceeds go to charity (you can even pick which ones you would like it to go to). I already have my bundle and am loving it. Heck, I almost paid retail for Wingnuts 2 last weekend, now I essentially get it for pennies on the dollar.
If you don't make it this year, definitely check it out next year as it only seems to keep getting bigger and better.
So
I guess the new MacBook Air is cute and optimized for, uh, thin. Otherwise, I think it is overpriced and under-featured. Thin is nice, but I can't ever think of a time when I though, “I can't use this darn laptop, it's just too thick!”. And the non-user-replaceable battery is a joke.
Now a pen-based tablet (ok, it can have multi-touch, too) in a slightly smaller form factor, running full OS X; THAT would be cool and useful. MacBook Air? No so much.
So
Reading the product page for the newly announced Photoshop Elements for Mac really drove home the growing divide between photography and digital imaging (which I have commented on before). Just look at the features they are touting:
Enhanced ability to create black and whites. This is so overused already because people seem to think that converting an image to B&W instantly gives it some kind of classy/artsy cred that it never had (and never will). It is just annoying.
And my personal favorite: 'one click adjustments'. The perfect opportunity to make your pictures look like everyone else's — not what you actually shot, but what some algorithm thinks is good. No creativity required at all.
Of course, there is nothing to say that you must use PS on your photos. It is just bewildering to me how many people do use it (and abuse it). As one famous professional photographer stated in a podcast (paraphrasing): 'It is amazing how things have changed. For me the creative process is everything I do before I click the shutter: composition, exposure control, lighting, etc. But today, for most 'photographers' the 'creative' process starts after they click the shutter...'
I guess mozilla was an exception, but what I call large 'corporate OSS' projects don't always work out. I also suspect that it is not a characteristic of OSS per se. It seems one of the issues was there was no pressure to deliver anything. So rather than focus on product delivery they created their own OS and programming tools as well as what is reported to be a unwieldy and poorly thought out architecture. Don't know that anyone is in the market for those things.
This reminds me of the first internet bubble when people would rush out and get office space and funding and have no idea what their product or business model was (or should be). They just wanted to be 'doing the startup thing' not actually delivering anything. Then it was time for what I referred to as 'the rise of B2B and B2C' as in 'Back To Banking' and 'Back To College'.
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I don't know why they bother. Yahoo continuously overcommits and under delivers when it comes to their web and especially their mobile offerings. After their announcement of Yahoo Go 3 at CES, I thought, 'why not see how they have screwed this up'. The usual amount. My phone, a Nokia N75 is listed as 'compatible', but when I go through the error fraught process of actually trying to download the much lauded version 3, I am rewarded with a slightly newer version of 2 that I already have installed. Lame. No version 3 in sight.
Their insistence on using zero-value Flash laden websites is also bewildering. When I attempted to enter my phone number to receive the download instructions, I was curtly prompted to 'enter a valid phone number'. What? Do these retards pretend to validate your phone number against a database of all mobile phone numbers in the US. Not likely. More of their shoddy production, I would say.
So
It has been a bit amazing the amount of rending of garments and gnashing of teeth that has gone on around AOL announcing that it is ending support for Netscape Navigator in February. Navigator and Communicator have been dead to me for years. I jumped to the lighter weight and more feature rich Mozilla builds when they first became stable and then made the leap to the even more nimble Firefox when it emerged.
I think back to the early-90s when I was using the nearly unheard of Mosaic browser to access the precious few sites that existed at the time (and creating a corporate site using the not-so-stable NCSA server code). Then there were rumblings on the Usenet forums about this upstart beta of the 'mozilla' browser. Fledgling webmasters were horrified by this new browser because you could set the number of download treads that the browser could use to access your site. Horrors! This would certainly be the end of the Internet — it can't possibly scale! But somehow we survived and the Mozilla Communications Corporation became Netscape and the rest is history.