mobrec

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.

Technorati Tags: apple, dubious, mac, macbookair

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:

The ability to make franken-photos by cutting and pasting people an things from a series of photos. I am sure this will come in handy for stalkers everywhere to put themselves in photos with their secret love that never actually happened. Yikes.

And of course, a PS favorite, the ability to change areas of a photo to create colors that didn't originally exist. Why strive for fidelity in your images when you can turn a sunflower orange and that grey sky blue?

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...'

Technorati Tags: badideas, dubious, photography, photoshop, creativity, digitalimaging

So
I found the comments following the article on boingboing about the Chandler calendar project a lot more insightful and informative that the semi-gushing review itself.

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'.

Technorati Tags: architecture, development, dubious, opensource, chandler

So
Just a quick note: Gmail now supports the creation of personal mailing lists. Now it is even easier to spam your friends with the latest URLs that you think might be of interest.

Technorati Tags: email, google, gmail, webtools

So
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.

Once again: don't bother with Yahoo NoGo.

Technorati Tags: crap, yahoogo, suckage, yahoo

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.

Technorati Tags: browser, firefox, history, innovation, internet, mozilla, netscape

So
Interesting stuff from a guy who hacked an Amazon Kindle — looks like it is mostly Linux and Java under the covers.

Technorati Tags: amazon, kindle, java, linux, hacks

So
As sort of companion piece to the previous Facts Are Not Enough there is this article from the Guardian that talks about how some widely held beliefs really have no basis in fact. I am sure you will recognize some of this wisdom from your own lives; here are some of the ones I have heard countless times:

Everyone must drink at least eight glasses of water a day (water is in food and other beverages)

We only use 10% of our brains (science still hasn't discovered the 'un-utilized' 90%)

Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight (makes reading difficult, but not damaging)

Shaving causes hair to grow back faster and coarser (I've heard this mostly from women)

Eating turkey makes you especially drowsy (but Swiss cheese has more Tryptophan in it)

The article doesn't cover one of my personal favorites, the all-too-frequently repeated and quite-well-documented-as-false claim that 'Al Gore invented the Internet'. Whenever I hear some repeat this, it just flips the bozo bit for them in my mind. Anyone who would parrot a lie that big is just a sad individual lacking in critical cognitive skills.

All of this goes to show that if you just blatantly make up 'facts' and repeat them enough, people will believe them (and repeat them).

Technorati Tags: ideas, news, facts, science

So
Google search is providing enhanced flight tracking info through the ever more productive search box.

I am sure there is a reason for mouth-eyes pictures, I just don't know what it is. Creepy.

Pretty impressive video of a guy singing a song backwards while performing actions that make it clear that he is not simply rolling the tape in reverse (at least until half way through). My second impression (after amazement) was that this guy has way too much time on his hands.

Technorati Tags: fun, google, humor, random

So
I am becoming convinced that I got a real lemon from Apple a few years back when I purchased an iMac from the online Apple store. I am beginning to wonder if the poor reliability that I have experienced has something to do with timing. I managed to buy a G5-based Mac about a month and a half before Apple announced the switch to Intel. Was it the case that Apple were willing to let quality slide as they were running out their back stock of G5-based systems?

Here is the history of this particular iMac:

It was delivered to me with a defective DVD drive. The drive would read/burn CDs and read DVDs. Burning DVDs resulted in 'buffer under-run' errors. I actually had the tech on the other end of the phone attempt a dump and run on me, by suggesting that I re-install the operating system and see if that fixed the problem. Moron. I made the point that if the OS was factory installed, tested and burned in properly, my re-installing it wasn't going to make a difference — it was clearly a hardware issue. Finally went through Apple's 'depot' replacement process where they express ship the part to me and I send back the defective part in a pre-paid mailer. Worked like a charm. DVD issue fixed.

Within a few months, the system started shutting down at random. Once again, one of the bright sparks on the Apple support line wanted me to re-install the OS to fix this issue (were these guys former Microsoft support techs?). After working through the moron ranks I finally got to someone who elliptically admitted that this was 'a known issue' and that I should take the system into the nearest Apple store for a fix. The guy at the Genius bar looked at the make of the iMac and said 'let me guess, it started randomly shutting down, right?'. About 20 minutes later, he popped out of the back room with the repaired system. When I asked about the root cause, he muttered something about 'logic board' and 'sensor' and kept telling me that there was no charge for the repair. Right. Not exactly confidence inspiring, but at least it was operable again.

The Leopard upgrade killed the system. Life was good until I attempted the seemingly simple task of upgrading the OS to Leopard. This went disastrously wrong. Read about it here and here. In the course of fixing this 'install media' issue, Apple replaced the DVD drive (again!), the hard drive and finally the Apple installed system RAM.

Less than two months later, the new hard drive fails. This was a mystery. One minute it was running the next minute it blanked the screen and kicked the fan on full. Attempts to reboot the system all ended with the iMac displaying the 'I can't find a drive to boot off of' flashing icon. Booting off of the install DVD and running Disk Utility confirmed that the internal drive could not be seen. Because I have an Apple Care extended warranty on this system (thank goodness!) they opted to send a tech out to the house to replace the drive. Five days later(!) he showed up and replaced the drive. Unfortunately, he had no clue what to do next. I showed him how to partition the drive and re-install the OS and made him stay until the install completed successfully (having experienced the previous shenanigans with the Leopard install). All was well and the system is back up and running. Again.

Until next time. In some ways, its bad that that is my attitude. Even when I balance the horrible reliability of this iMac with the fact that I have a nearly eight year old iMac that is chugging right along, no issues. Ever. The other iMacs (some approaching 5 years old) also have had no issues. I would estimate that Apple has more than paid for the original purchase price of the system in parts and labor. I wish that they would just replace it the next time it fails (not likely). My Apple Care plan runs out next summer. I hope I won't need it again, but based on history, I have my doubts.

Technorati Tags: apple, defective, dubious, leopard, mac, osx, suckage, technology, support