Microsoft Business Unit Blog

Well that's very nice isn't it. I have only read a couple of posts, but I like it. I like the style that reflects the the other mactopia sties. I like the current personal nature of the posts, weaving anecdotal and technical based articles.

I like the first entry I read, "Being a Macintosh at Microsoft" it made me feel a kinsmanship to the MS guys using macs in, well a Microsoft world. At work I'm fiarly constantly derided for using a "smack".

Naked Wonders Flickr group...

OK is this really what the internet was meant for. When Tim BL thought of an amazing way of interconnecting information web, when he uploaded that orriginal source - did he intend for geeks (with strangely hairless chest akin to a certain UK Soccer team, here) to go Alaska take off all their clothes and take a picture, then share it with a bunch of other equally out of their minds people..... here.

I'm concerned, sickened and actually kind of intrigued... it is a little bit kinky you've gotta say, maybe it's a British thing... 13% of UK Men... that is not a small number. That Charlotte Church girl is pretty fine too.

I think I should explain where this all came from... I read Steve Jobs' blog here he recently had a post, here about a site called Valley Wag that just ran a story about a guy called Chris which then led me to a flickr group here.

What can I say other than the web is a weird place, connecting people in even weirder ways... anyone tried skinny dipping ?

AT&T The Government and ZeFrank

This is an old post of the master of the League of Awesomeness.... I love his polite name for AT&T - don't you just love state sponsored monopolies [sic]



the show with zefrank

iPod again ?

Well I'm considering getting an iPod AGAIN. I must be the only macintoosh owner / evangalist that doesn't own one yet. If I got one I'd get an iTrip or a derivative device allowing me to listen to podcasts in the car. I do believe an iTrip could be the tipping point / killer application for an iPod purchase.

I just know if I get one from the refurb store I'm bound to get burned - oh what to do... 35% off is very tempting.

More Mac Ads

I'm very excited...



After watching the end of "Trust a mac" advert this is revealed...



Catty much ?

Google Mac

I didn't know about this until last night. It is a search engine for Mac stuff, on Google. I have lost where I got the link from, I was trawling my RSS feeds and out of the 254 new posts I had to get through I found it...



The styling is a bit out of date, it is using the tranlucent plastics looks of the late 90s, from the original iMac range. Bondi Blue, Tangerine Orange and others.

I like the left aligned even more minimalist Google look. Lets face it Google hasn't compromised its minimal white home page even though it is amazingly successful - unlike some other search engine / portals I could mention but won't because one in particular is buying me breakfast soon.... Intrigued ? You will be.

It seems to search Mac relevant sites, even my usual, "Am I connected to the internet or just being served local cached pages, to check I'll search for something I never search for enough to be cached" Purple people eaters turned up some Mac centric hits.



I actually got this search trick off our network admin, seemed funny enough to remember.

Coinstar, Walmart and iTunes

I have been meaning to write this entry for about 8 weeks, ever since I first noticed a family using the coinstar near our local Walmart.

I've seen the machine there standing tall taking peoples money and converting gallons of loose change into real money - coins are not real money apparently.

You can either get a voucher for the ammount to be used in the store where it is located OR donate it charity OR you can now get a coinstar card that you top up. When you check out their website coinstar tell you according to their research 81% of the users of the machines made a special journey to the store for that machine.

When I was a kid and even when I used to work retail, I'd go home with my bum bag full of change, when I couldn't get it changed at work, read palm it off on my manager whilst cashing off.

Every so often I'd sit down and count out all my change, like "a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge!". Then I'd bag it all up and triumphantly march to the bank and deposit it. All of it. Into my account.

It was a simple exercise in counting.

I don't understand why anyone can't do this. Why would anyone delegate this task to a machine. OK machines make our lives easier, they perform repetative chores quickly, without error and tirelessly.

Especially, and here is the kicker, since these machines are designed to count up all your money and then take a cut and keep it. It's 8.9% last time I checked that's nearly 9 cent in every dollar.

They've crossed the pond too - a quick google points to a post in a guys blog that claims they are in the UK near his Local Lord Sainsbury store, they only take 7.9% - still nearly eight pence in every British pound.

Why would you do that ? OK I'm all for paying for a service, usually I pay for a service I can't provide myself, a butcher or a
mechanic. Paying for a machine to count my change, that has got to be the height of idocy. I mean you see whole familes crowding around the magical machine whilst it whirs and counts and clunks and humms. Stuf that when I have kids I'll have them, slave labour esque, counting away daddies change, down the back of the sofa, in the crevices of the car.

In questioning someone about the coinstars "They are obviously for stupid people, only stupid people would waste that ammount of money, to cover up the fact they clearly can't count or add up."

There was a rumor that Apple was in talks to dish out iTMS vouchers, without the commision. That piqued my interest because I don't mind paying for my music - I even argued that point recently at work. That way, I'd get all the fun of the counting machine and then some music. Here Gizmodo reports that it is actually being rolled out.

Like Better

Saw this about a week and a half ago, then it was mentioned on commandN and then again on Geek Brief TV. When I tried it the other week, there was no brain thing so I got bored after a few minutes of giving but not getting anything back.

The premise is this: you are shown two pictures and simply have to click which one you like. Don't think don't analyse just click which one appeals to you more.

It is all horribly pseudo psych but hell, that means it'll annoy the fabulouso one too, yes goat trading girl that's you...no talking...

Well now every half a dozen questions or so, the little brain goes pink as it has some "knowledge".



I didn't expect any great revelations however it did catch me out when it's first observation was "You're a guy" - OK it was correct, I'm thinking, pretty cool but it's got a 50/50 chance.

Observation number two, it got my political affiliations, again 50/50

All of the guesses (I refuse to call them knowledge) are 50/50. What blew me away was it then chose, "You like instructions when they are concrete" followed by "You're left handed" then "Boxers not briefs"

All correct in succession, see what it says about you and let me know. I probably played for about 15 minutes, it got some wrong like... "You feel drained by meeting lots of new people" where I chose "No I feel energised" however, the Goat trader will now point out that "There is nothing allowing for personal preference" which apparently some test can wieght against.

Post in the comments, which now apparently can count, what it said about you.

Broken on purpose

I am a big fan of Presentation Zen and recently it led me to a video.

< rant>
This video is perfectly safe at work - but blocked, don't ask me why - apparently I'm admin staff now. Also read here
Makes some very good points about keeping your employees happy.
</rant>

Anyway, recently major changes happened in my work place, the fallout from this hasn't quite been realised yet, I am definately keeping my head down though in the near future.

My rage at the moment stems from the idea of things being broken on purpose, hence that video linked above is very apt. I won't say which of the catagories mentioned my problems fall into - go figure.

I'm currently up against the idea that "you're using it wrong" - I've blogged about this before. Users don't use things wrong, if it doesn't work it is broken. No do users set out to invent brokenness just to annoy operators.

I myself as an applications designer have had stand up rows with my boss about the location of a button or the "obviousness" of a feature.

Everytime he points out, "Yes well you understand it you inventeded, I shouldn't need you to guide me through using it" some times he's correct. Sometimes, he's being pedantic. Sometimes it's a generational thing, I obviously spend far to much time on the web and know how things work. Even the new Web 2.0 things that work differently. An affinity for technology maybe.

The recent changes have broken several mechanisms I use, including my external access via the client of my choice to a particular service. There is a web based version of the service, great now I can access it anywhere even without the client. However, the new service still supports the heavy weight feature rich client, just not for us externally anymore.

The web interface imho is just that, a web based light client for use on the move. However the current party line is "What do you want to do it like that for" and my response of; "I'm the user, the progress shouldn't remove options and choice and certainly not in this manner." isn't cutting it. Progress right now feels like a number of steps backwards.

In my opinion currently the service is broken on purpose.

Seth says some interesting things about graphs late on. I've seen the Nepoleon graph before, I fall in the catagory of, loving it. I think it's amazingly clever. I don't subscribe to the idea that you use graphs to demonstrate that 4 is a bigger number than 2. These are the kinds of graphs I've been subjected to in meetings. The excuse being the same one trotted out in this film, people are too busy to understand this themselves. Now that is broken on purpose.

Feeds moved too

Obviously with me moving files and publishing on Blogger to my new host, GoDaddy I have also updated where the rss feeds go.



Hopefully now if you visit, http://www.musingsonamac.com/blog/ using your normal rss enabled browser the rss file it should find is at feed://musingsonamac.com/blog/atom.xml hopefully.

Cheers for continued support.

M

Moved musingsonamac to musingsonamac.com

Rather than buy the domain and host a single php file pointing you back to the old site, I've finally republished everything from Blogger's dashboard.

You end up altering three lots of settings, a)FTP site to publish too b)Where the archive is stored c)Where the feeds are published too.

I itterated each time noticing strange outputs on my ftp server, like folders with the old domain name, then no xml files with the feeds in on the new server. Well all is well now. Just gotta wait for the stats to build up again.

Stay tuned for me porting everything to a "propper blog" at some point.

Television preview & Vicks hand sanitizer

Well I'm sat at work, creating insanely great web applications. I receive a call on my cellphone. It is my mother.

I've got these tickets in the mail today, to this thing. Do you want to go to some TV preview this evening, you get to see some TV and might win some prizes.

So I say yes, dad agreed. We were to be there at 1900, at a hotel on the other side of town.

Once we arrived we took a drink in on of the hotel's bars. There was a sign on the door of the suite this company had booked, saying doors open at 1915. Once we'd finished our drinks there was a fair sized queue which swelled some more after we'd joined until about 200 people were awaiting entry.

We were shown into the conference room in groups of maybe 50. I assume each group was given the same chat which consisted of "It is going to take two hours, you can't leave once it's started. You will be shown two shows, one show called Soulmates and a second a sitcom called City"

Upon entry to the venue, tickets were taken and there was a bit of a free for all at the back of the room where you could help yourselves to softdrinks, cordial, and mints. Once everyone was in the MC began his second spiel of the evening. A question pack was distributed that wasn't to be opened until told to do so, top secret. He explained something about the company Preview TV - information about how they used to do it (Three course meal with booze, but they stopped as it apparently effected results), how it was important that the opinions you write down about the programmes are you own and not your neighbors, you'd see programmes as you would at home, with adverts etc., both shows are from the 80s that are being considered for purchase and remaking.

The first task was to fill in a "prize" booklet - this was being done to allow them to deliver a correct prize package to you if you won. You were to select from well known consumer brands. Then they with those booklets the MC piles them up and ask for a volunteer from the audience. The chosen lady "randomly" selected from pile of entries three winners, each winner was handed a voucher and told to hold onto it until the end of the evening.

The first show was Soulmates, a truly awfully edited shoulder pad driven drama. It was about a psychologist who is treating a patient whom she recognizes from flashbacks she begins experiencing. Then a web of intrigue begins to unfold stretching back to the turn of the century involving a nobles daughter to a possible plot involving the Japanese and the bombing of Pearl harbor.

Basically it was a load of trash.

Once this show was over you were allowed to open the secret documents. This featured a single side of questions about the show, what did you think of x, how would you change y etc.

Then the assembled crowd were offered a couple more sweets to keep us going.

Onto the second show.

A cheap rip of Spin City with Michael J Fox. It was amusing only so far as I can laugh at any cheap American comedy. Clearly made in the 80s it was more shoulder pads, big hair and easy laughs. The plot of this episode comprised of a line about the county cemetery sliding down a hill. The City manager had to solve this problem, whilst battling a daughter who had just returned home from college and was proposing to have sex with a married man under her mother's roof.

Basicly it was a load of trash.

Once that show was over everyone returned to the second page of the top secret documents. Again more questions about what worked / didn't work / who was funny / wasn't funny.

Now here is the sinister bit, I am naturally cynical, I had lowered my guard somewhat since we had arrived. I had been on alert for the phrase "Has anyone ever considered time share ?" or "Everyone knows pyramid selling doesn't work, but our founder has designed the hexagonal marketing system." None of these had been uttered at any point and I relaxed into evening.

Then however we were re-shown one of the adverts that had been on during the commercial breaks of the programmes we'd watched. It was for, drum roll please.... Vicks Hand Sanitiser. After that we filled in another prize book, selecting more products we'd like to get as a prize, hair color, breakfast cereals and cold and flu remedies. These prize books where put into the magic box and a different volunteer selected three more prize winners.

Here the evening hit a home run as far as I am concerned, the pretty lady read out my name. Fantastic. Our hero wins a prize.

So with that over we were referred back to the advert, remember Vicks Hand Sanitiser, there then followed about 6 pages of questions. Now these people are clearly pros, as not all the pages were numbered you know like normal people count, 1... 2... 3... no this bunch of clowns used special pages like 4A and 4B to try and trick you.

The entire Vicks Hand Sanitiser debacle took about 45 minutes, it included questions like did the advert make you feel empowered. When watching the advert what was the main message (To sell hand stuff... incase you were unsure.)

Afterwards, it becomes clear that the entire thing was a ruse, and whilst not trying to flog me on trapezoid selling schemes, I wasn't there for my opinions on City the new hip sitcom, or the Pearl Harbor conspiracy thing, no sir. I was being used as easy prey for evil market research by.....THE MAN.

The ordeal ends with all those who won prize baskets being given an envelope - I'm still expecting a big bag of groceries as a prize based on the data we've put in the "prize book" - I open the envelope and in it I find $40, in cash.

Yes you see, the "prize book" was merely another tool in the insidious market researchers arsenal.

Let's not be to dramatic, I didn't come home with a new religion or some crazy red string on my wrist. I did come home with $40.

When you work it out, $20 an hour isn't bad, for me. If however someone approached you and said

"Hi, I'm from Dick, Prick and Whore market research. We'd like to keep you in a room for two hours, show you some crappy 80s TV with a gallon of adverts. Then pick your brain about just one for some inane product. You could have a chance to win some cash but they'll be 200 people there and the chance is about 3% and after that it is only $40"


You tell them to stick right. Lesson learned !

Thanks to the Blogsphere. Bloger Survey from the University of Massachusetts

Some time ago one of my 12 readers sent me a link to a bloggers survey. I don't think of myself as having any kind of readership - however I thought I'd contribute.

Today I get home and find this in my pile of post... thanks very much.



Very fetching, I think.
Ta

Apple Survey

A tidy desktop is akin to a tidy mind. Whilst I am somewhat anal in my organisational practices at work. The color of the paper clips match the minutes I'm organising. I have various color Post-It index tabs that help schedule todo item, a very clean inbox, dangerously clean (I utilise mail flags and folders, smart folders, rules and I have "Mail Act-On" installed for quick triage of data.) God forbid if some clown decides to mess with the order of documents on my desk while I am away. No the excuse "I was just looking for x" doesn't cut it.

Anyway this translates to my insessent need to keep my desktop clear. I am guilty of a sin here. I use an extremely quick and deadly management system on my desktop. A Folder marked todo. It is truly deadly, whilst it keeps my desktop clear of clutter it is a veritable hallway closet of junk, forgotten, documents, funny pictures and logos I found but didn't really have a need for.

I thought I should do some tidying this morning firing off documents to parties, chasing up support calls that promised they'd get back to me (lying schmucks) - further to all this nonsense I came across this...



I wonder if this survey is linked to the rumour I'd heard that Apple has removed the mods from it's Discussion Forums ?

I'm a cutie, apparently

I was minding my own business on Adium, my IRC aggregator and boom up pops this...



I'm not entirely sure what the person meant by "getting dirty for the first time". Maybe she's taken up pig farming and needs some help building a pen. She should consider searching for Farm Dating on google I imagine.

The term, get stuffed sprang to mind, but I wonder if she'd already thought of that.

iTunes armed rampage update

Well I've not recovered my playlists etc. I have found this script though courtesy of that nice chap Doug Adams...

iTunes shoots you in the foot

It is oft said that the C programming language, and C++, allows you to shoot youself in the foot, in comparison to Java that is tighly type cast. I found this - notice the Java entry versus the C entry.

Anyway my reason for this meander down programming 101 lane is thus: this evening I was attempting to consolidate my iTunes library. I have some 7000 tracks on my mini, several hundred of them must be duplicates, such that I've given up on it.



Horrific isn't it ? No I don't mean my musical taste !

Well anyhow, I thought I'd have a quick look at my MBPs Library, it was starting to get untidy.

First of all I ran iTunes ever so helpful, "Show Duplicate Songs"


Excellent, there was about 144, nothing to major. Some were meant to be present, such as REM E-Bow the letter, featured on two albums.



Fine, still some room for improvement. I got bored trying to manually delete tracks, since I knew a major contingent of them were indeed my fault - I used to create a folder for tracks I wanted to burn to CD or put on my Phone, I'd fill these folders with copies of the tracks, incase I lost the folder during a burn or a copy.

I decided I could get round this problem of my creating extra folders by simply deleteing the iTunes library and reimporting the organised iTunes music folder from the disk.

iTunes very helpfully allows you to delete the library but not remove the files from the disk if you don't want.



Great.

So I then copy all my tracks back in to the library, all 2251 of them. All good so far. That is until I find that actually when iTunes has emptied my Library (alright, when I emptied my Library) it also takes out the playlists. Not just my own created lists, but the "Purchased", "Most played" smart list everything. The lists are still there - just nothing in them.

This is extreemly annoying since the only way I knew how to find Dave Brubeck Take Five, was in the that Top 25 Played list, he was at the the top with something silly like 425 plays. I am not here ot absovle my dreadful taste, and anyway the maltese one likes that on a Friday, it is our end of the week song with a coffee.

What is more annoying is I have been extreemly fond of this Apple Script...



From Doug Adams, it allows me to import my CDs directly into a playlist. Something I find strangely lacking in iTunes' Library viewer. No Browse function doesn't do it, for one it includes podcasts etc.

So I am a bit miffed, it is all my own fault obviously. I am just a bit annoyed that iTunes removes the links in the playlists without telling you that is what you're doing. On the plus side, the display of duplicate songs.... yeah well that is down... to 44, it is all my own fault obviously. I am left with must be 50 playlists with naff all in them... it is all my own fault obviously

UPDATE: I mentioned the other day about my smart playlist that helps me keep track of which podcasts I've listened too... well my little tidying up exercise has screwed the pooch on that too. Marvelous.

Removed features from Leopard

"NetInfo functionality has been removed from Mac OS X entirely." from here

This concerns me, as someone who has recently spent time dispelling the myth that macs crash a network. I attached a dozen macs to our corporate network with no ill effects, more so I made them authenticate against our active directory using NetInfo manager.

Where am I to find these settings in the future ? Surely Apple isn't abandoning their integration features, it was always a good stick to beat the ignorant with.

Sun buys HP

Yes, shocking I know. Completely out of the blue. That is all the things that flew though my mind yesterday when I read that. Only on further invesitgation I found this, typical sensational red top really.

iTune Smart playlist and podcasts

I have had a smart playlist for AGES in iTunes. It picks out my new podcasts that I havn't finished listening to yet.



The only flaw that existed was that not all Podcasts can have a play count.

"What" I hear you cry "How can than be ?"

Indeed, despite having the catagory podcast and being downloaded from iTunes, you can't play all the files. The RSS format allows for any file to be inserted, pictures etc. So when an entire podcast actually constitutes a pdf file, even when you open it, it doesn't get a play count.

Perfectly acceptable that playcount metadata doesn't map to a document. Completely buggers up my smart playlist though.

UNTIL Today. It struck me that I could on the odd files the come in and play havoc with my smart playlist I check the advert, notices, brochure etc and then assign it a rating of 1.

Simply have the smart playlist only pick up files that don't have a rating et voila.

OK When did that happen, Google on Blogger

I just went to sign in and found that Firefox had helpfully entered my gmail account information on my blogger sign in page.

After a quick double take and a 180 when I saw that I had no blog, well that account doesn't.

I went to re-authenticate and found this...



I thought they'd forgotten they'd bought Blogger, you can imagine these poor developpers coding away and still getting paid until some Google bean counter slaps his head and exclaims "That's where the money's going." Saying that getting paid for coding with no management breathing down my kneck... sounds like my idea of heaven.

OK After a quick google on blogger, I found this, I am obviously running a week behind on this one.

Mac Pro System Shoot out

AND they added a screen... need I say more

System Shootout

Mail.app icon

OK It is a small change but a fun one.

I decided to alter my mail.app icon, I'd had some British Stamps kicking around for a while, so I decided to use them.
Doesn't she look twee HRH Queen Elizabeth bouncing around in my dock...


There are apparently two methods.

1) Simply open the info pane on the application you want to change the icon. Click the small icon at the top of the info window and paste the new icon on to this. Voila new icons. I used this method when putting a custom icon on my Hard Disk, I used a rather fetching Mac Book Pro logo.



2) Some applications have their icons in a .icns file inside their package contents. Right click (Yes Apples can't right click) the application in Finder and select "Show Package Contents". Navigate into the Contents Folder -> Resources. Inside you will find many files, 327 in the case of mail.app. Find the icns files you want to replace, in mail.app it was app.icns backup the originals if you want to. Copy in your new icons. Boom relaunch and it picks up the new icon.


Welcome to my humble Mac Your Majesty.

I recommend here as a resource for icons

New Sennheiser Headphones

I was put on to buying decent headphones a few years ago by a pal of mine. DJ Kid you know the type, big headphones, loud music, ill fitting clothes and carries a record bag around with his books and stuff in.

He would buy new bits of wire and foam for his head gear, rather than just buying a new pair of headphones. He was the kind of guy that would lecture you on the evils of mp3 compression below 164 bits.

Well I am far more ignorant of such things, I like good quality sound, I know that to test speakers of headphones for quality you play classical pieces not popular music. I know that open back headphones allow more natural air movement, that closed back sets can get better low frequency experience into the ear. That is where the understanding ends.

So far if some audiophile tells me x is better than y when looking at headphones, I'll believe him. That is how I came to the opinion that Sennheiser headphones are "Very nice indeed".

I bought my first pair last December, and you know the dude was right. They sound great.


I got a pair of Sennheiser PMX100. These "Streetwear" headphones have a round the head band, not an over the top band. Each headphone sits on the ear and it secured by a light ruberised clip that sits on the ear. Perfectly comfortable.

They are open backed, meaning you get good air movement and this doesn't stifle the sound. However because they are open they do suffer from leakage, whereby the sound is audible by surrounding people, on the bus in the office etc.

I found that the headband, whilst not as intrusive as a normal over the head model is actually very uncomfortable when you want to put your head back on a seat rest if flying, or if sitting against a wall, trying to blog in the middle of JFK whilst overt security procedures are causing massive delays... (that is assuming you've still got your portable electronics, not checked in yet)

Sound is excellent, perfectly capable at higher volumes. They have a good range, the Lark Ascending sounds lovely through them.

However I began wearing them for sport and I found the round the back head band has a tendency to bounce if you are running. Nothing major but certainly disconcerting. Further the foam pads would be caked in moisture when I'm finished my exertions. They dry quickly but I decided that the sweat and moisture where not the best combination for keeping these beauties in tip top shape.

Enter the new Sennheiser PMX70. Designed for sport, they are fully ruberised meaning they cope with whatever your sweating head and ears can drown them in.



I first spotted them about a month and a half before they came out and being the impatient type had some on back order with my usual supplier.

This model has a different band, it is a neck band so it dips behind the ears. Providing both a comfortable fit and more secure placements on the ears and sound emitter itself is secured in the ear but not pushed into the ear canal like, the ear bud style design.

Despite the rather "lurid" colour, that in fact several people have commented on, these are excellently designed. When they arrived what struck me most was the weight. Just from picking them up you could tell they were amazingly light.

They fitted comfortably, although like the older PMX100 the band isn't snug against my head, or neck in this case. I think it would be even more secure this way. Would it be more comfortable, could argue that it wouldn't since having them constantly touching might be more of an irritant.

After wearing them for a few hours on the first evening with them, I still was impressed at how little they seemed to weigh. I decided to check and measure both my PMX100 and the new PMX70 models.

The pictures below demonstrate how stark the difference was, at over 35g less the new port model is more than 50% lighter.






Both feature a single side wire, this is a nice touch. I much prefer it. I find with two wires as you run and your trunk twists two wires from either side soon irritate and quickly twist.

You might have to consider what you're going to use the headphones for. If not for sport in a dry environ you might want the extra weight, you could find it reassuring.

Overall I can highly recommend both of these Sennheiser models. I don't know if people discover a type of headphone they like and stick to it at the ignorance of all others. (A theory proposed to me over dinner recently in the context of Wine Bottle openers, stand by for my wine opener review...)

Lots of people tell me that you get a much better transfer of sound energy from the devices diaphragms with the in ear buds that you almost push into the ear canal. I don't think these would be appropriate for sport, how they might be effected the temperature I don't know even if they would. They seem like they are more effort fitting the and refitting them after interruptions at work or in the gym. Certainly for listening in the office or the gym I will be sticking with these two sets for now.

Both decent photos shameless aquired from here

Different Coverage of "Busting this plot"

I decided to watch BBC News 24 today rather than my normal News staple ABC. The first thing I noticed was the difference in coverage on the British Broadcasting Corporation News Service. For quite some time no details were given, this is apparently to ensure any future case against terror suspects.

The second thing I noticed was how dash ungrateful some people were. Whilst it is understandable that people are annoyed especially if they had not heard news on the way to the airport that they are uninformed. Once they realise that it is a major security alert in place, common sense should dictate that you let people get on with their jobs. Realise that the security precautions are there for your safety.

Previously I have been selected for a more careful security check , my person and my baggage given a thorough search, including a chemical analysis of seams, zips and equipment. I have been unphased, helpful and have acquiesced to security personel's requests. Why ? Because these checks are there to ensure I don't get blown up mid flight.

These facts I sternly told a fellow once who was remonstrating at the extra security check he was subjected to. I informed him, the security persons were trying to protect him and others. The officer frisking me thanked me for being so understanding.

Ignorance is a worrying factor in situations like this: one woman interviewed on the BBC News was complaining that "Well if you've got a bomb in your hand luggage and you put it in your bag well you've still got a bomb init."

I rocked with rage at the computer feed that this woman could be so short sighted, so ignorant and so reckless to assume the security services were doing this as some sort of placebo.

It is interesting to consider how long the new measures about hand luggage can be reasonably enforced. The Israel flag carrier has incredible long check in requirements, will that become a new normal for the UK ? The UK Security forces have increased their numbers from 1500 to 3500 recently - these investment have obviously paid off with an increase in intelligence gathering.

Research is obviously needed to find out why these people are radicalised against a country that, raised them, clothed them and educated them. Iraq is not a reason, it is an excuse. Previously if you disagreed with a governments foreign policy you would vote against them in one of these silly election things. Apparently the idea now is to murder a bunch of civilians and keep killing until a government capitulates - yes I can see how that ideology is so much more free and tolerant. Well it worked in Spain I suppose.

DONT PANIC

WWDC 2006 Keynote Observations

WWDC 2006 Keynote Observations

John Hodgeman, what a guy (Where is this big island ?).

Spaces - Linux heads have been begging for this, about time, Virtu have a version of this, in fact I demo'd it to a colleague recently. Virtu didn't have that snazzy ability to organise your apps by dragging them around on the exposè'd version of spaces.
I assume they will also add in the sexy transition effects from their core graphics library.

Verdict: About bloody time, is this going to be another mapping on my multi-button mouse ? Or merely away for me to hide my peccadillo when the boss tromps into mission control ?

Time machine - Windows something called System Restore. It was a load of rubbish. I know people who swear by it and swear at it in equal measure. Personally it has never saved me bother, unreliable, unstable and doesn't actually work. Vista is reported to have a universdal system wide undelete that keep old versions of peoples files - even after they deleted.
Working or not, it is system level backup, drivers, registry (yuk), settings and programs.

What time machine is offering, apparently, fully covers document, system settings, applications, contacts and e-mails etc. Full versioning. It is a great idea, I'm a recent convert to the cult of actually backing up, but my clone can be out of date, by a week at most. That is a long time.

This is offering full fine grained control of your entire system. This has to be a huge load of space. It claims it'll chat to a server, what happens when you disconnect and then run time machine ? What kind of connection is required to a remote store for this to work, how much chatter is there going to be ? Will this work for codec and their connected files ?

Verdict: Jury is currently in session, try again later.

Spotlight - Boolean searching hooray. The network connected search. OK I'm sure my spotlight can search my network drives already, maybe it's not indexing them very well and falls back to a name based search so if that is improved it is all good.

I'm not a big spotlight user, I use it more and it makes me become less organised because it becomes a crutch for badly organised folders. Does that matter ? I'm finding docs just as quick... is it making the hierarchical file system invisible ?

I am a big Quicksilver fan, is spotlight moving into the launcher space going to be interesting, you betcha. I imagine I'll still keep Quicksilver because it is amazingly intuitive and knows what I want to do.

The peasant girl is a big spotlight fan geek, partially because the poor dear ends up being askedtot find archaic documents that our colleagues have lost and can't be bothered finding themselves. She uses spotlight and finds them, making her more sought after in the future, a dreadful cycle of abuse.

Verdict: Looking forward to what this could offer.

The entire package - Seemed like a load of rubbish to me other than they're going to stop fooling about and deliver the same stuff on all machines. It is interesting that it means Front Row will go on the new power mac ? Is there and IR port and remote they didn't mention ? Have they slashed the prices of the Cinema displays to end of line them and develop a new one with IR etc ?

Verdict: Nice consolidation.

Core Animation - OK Looks very nice, I'm not a big graphics man. I'd refer to a pal of mine who is a big game and graphics fan.

Verdict: Ask again later after I've consulted with a higher power.


Universal Access - OK New voice, Alex, gorgeous, he / she even inhales before talking. Go and listen to that sound clip it is good. No not natural but I would find that so much easier to listen to were I a visually impaired user than the current standard.

Lots of features mentioned, I'm not qualified to really comment on them, I've heard of braille displays before, seen a video of one - no idea how good they are, or how OS X will translate to one.

Steve's demo was much better than a previous MS demo of a Universal Access app. Yes the MS one was speech to text which is hard stuff. However I don't think Steve would have stood on that stage with a product that didn't work.

I did like involving the Vista team there and there is no point ragging on MS because their stuff can't say iPod, which Steve was comical but without hubris regarding.

Verdict: I'm really not going to comment, well done for putting more work in though.

Mail Updates - Did you notice the cute RSS icon hiding there, conspicuous by not being mentioned.

Stationary - PLEASE. OK I know apple makes better templates overall, because they care about design and details. Do we really need to give people more chances to put extraneous html on the wires. I, to be honest I'm fearful given the bad reps Apple received regarding the coding output of the iWeb app. Man those pages can be slow.

A nice mail based media browser tie in for the photo stationary was a nice touch. A pretty contrived example of putting stationary on a draft message though...

To Do and Notes.... err hello Outlook anyone. Apple clearly playing catch up here. I reckon OS X is going to tightly integrate these objects better throughout the OS. However I'm losing count of the number of post-it™ models we have in OS X.
Stickies the application
Dashboard stickies the widgets
Notes in Mail
Tasks in iCal

Hopefully the OS Wide service might tie these together can I manage them remotely from .mac?

Notes concepts look good, I was recently reading an article about how you can already mail yourself and have an Apple script put special messages translated on to your iCal To-Do list, so this is another nice function to have natively.

Looks like a lot of settings (bad thing) for the To-Dos, I know my boss hates that Outlook makes quick To-Dos so complex, I always smile because iCal allows simple to-do lists that I can manage, with less options, more powerfully than in Outlook.

Tying in iCal to calDav is fantastic, I can't wait to see how this pans out. Notice the Outlook and Thunderbird icons on the iCal sneak preview.

Verdict: Maybe it isn't going to offer the integration of address book and iCal like one screen-shot faker hoped for but none the less some nice new add ons. With the extra larger html e-mails floating around though, I fear for poor Ted Stevens and his tubes, because the internet is not a big truck, you know - mmmk.

Dashboard - No ability to take widgets and have them outside the dashboard layer. OK Maybe it is still top secret, maybe not I don't care that much for dashboard, big RAM hog. OK a dictionary on tap is decent. I use notes, sometimes. Weather and a snapshot month view for working what day is what date.

How much RAM do you think that frightening cramped dashboard was using ?


Javascript Debugger - I can't wait for this.

Webclip (Nice Icon) - The idea of cutting out web pages to widgets, seems like an MS concept that they can do in Sharepoint, where you can capture others web pages and place them on your own and they update when the original does. See Redmond is helping you copy even as a user..Seriouslyly though I've done some digging and that is great for a static html page, apparently it doesn't work for dynamically spit out content driven pages. Whether WebClip is any better that remains to be seen.

The demo was very cool. I'd love to know how it is doing this, is it picking up cue from the DOM, is it built on pixels, is it gripping some CSS cunning ? The eBay demo seemed to indicate that dynamic pages would be WebClip'd.The webcam bit, blew my mind. apparently "It's all live"

Verdict: Well, WebClip is pretty exciting, it is allowing me to even more control what content I see from the web. I bet it has displeased add sellers though, not more banner adds in Leopard ?

iChat - Well tabbed chats, chax has given me that for months already. Crud from photo-booth... bothered. Animated buddy icons, get back to using mySpace. Backgrounds, I don't see the point.

Did you notice Steve did the "schuuup" sound - I'm sure Justin Long should have a chat with him about that.

iChat Theatre, sharing slideshows, presentations and photos - NICE. Wonder what the speed will be like. That is decent innovation on the part of the program. Sharing features and desktop control sound useful though - if you havn't got OS X Server, is this a decent way to manage desktop support for your users ?

Hopefully they will address some of the god awful connection problems they have. Skype manages to trounce through most NAT routers and even some corporate firewalls... iChat should be able to do the same.

Verdict: More crap for the kids to oo and arrr about when in the Apple Churches, I mean stores and they are fooling around with the iSights. Sharing features and desktop control are excellent additions. The install base being Apple only with fairly shoddy coverage with AOL IM is not that helpful. Skype has an install base of... how many hundreds of thosands ?

Mac Pro... OK it could be a bit more expensive...

Hey now I could have added a fibre channel card. I love looking at the kind of hardware that could feed a third world nation for a year or so. Capitalism at its best really.


I'm actually delirious with the power that beast would provide under my desk, not in a kinky tumescene kind of way. Actually looking at the prospect of 16 gigs of RAM, maybe I am getting a bit hot and bothered, excuse me for a while.

I like the way they tell me it is free delivery, as if they're doing me a favor.

WWDC So unfair... no streaming...

Say it aint so secret Steve jobs

devastated and numb is all I can say, truly a space has been left in my life... Where is that damn time machine functionality he spoke about, then I could go back and relive the memories.

Well Secret Diary of Steve Jobs is no more, I think I need time to mourn.

WWDC06 I was sent this link...

Fine in the digg driven world of rumor and suspicion, I have been sent this via Digg.



Things to note, the X is cut in half to make a V, leading on to the subtitle underneath "Introducing V---a 2.0" I think it's fake but a learned friend reckons it's real and sites this as a precedent..."Circa 2004"



UPDATE: This has now shown up on my TUAW feed, they show a second banner with allegedly "Hasta la Vista. Vista," on it.

Now I'm going to stop this circus of posting every little bit I hear, because anyone reading this will also read the other decent mac blogs out there that can pay more lip service than me.

errr mobile skype, yeah and...

This popped up in my RSS just now. I don't get it. I've had a windows mobile version of Skype on my Windows Mobile handheld for 9 months. When my device connects to my WiFi and I load skype it connects to the web via that WiFi and I have held conversations with people.

Now I never tried it when I was hooked up via GPRS on the phone because well GPRS was terrible, I have no reason to suspect it wouldn't have connected though had I chased GPRS into working past getting the cricket scores.

Whether it's gonna do some jiggery pokery in the new version if you have skype out minutes available and your handheld latches onto a WiFi it'll dial using that instead of your normal Sprint or T-Mobile service, which would be cool enough to warrant a "That's pretty cool" response from me... Or if it offered a video enabled version that would then reduce your 3G video call costs ?

We'll have to wait and see I suppose but it just struck me as a none news item per se. Similar to the new wifi skype phones that are going to pillage peoples open wifi so you can make and receive skype calls. Yes it is pretty cool in a convergence kind of way.

Speaking of which I never did blog about a BT + CISCO convergence thing I was dragged to by my boss some time back. Complete waste of our time and not really applicable to us, helped him write some form of coherent strategy document though, so maybe not a complete waste. We got free usb memory devices out of it too, which I promptly lost - never mind only 128 megs, but hey with this funky windows vista memeory cacheing stuff coming up, that could have been used for I dunno the windows logo... not that I should be so smug... sat here with my mac os x 128x128 px icons.

Enough for now... as Rev. Jobs says "Peace out"

WWDC 06 - All tingly

Well we're almost there, in less than 24 hours, we'll know what all the fuss was about;

Magical iCurve

You know when that Ive bloke talks about the iMac floating in the air, he's waxing lyrical just a little bit. However I've recently re-organised the office and cleared the desk up a bit. As such I thought I might try the laptop hooked up proper to the 19" monitor and an external keyboard + mouse (maybe a Bluetooth mighty mouse... Watch this space). The white apple keyboard I got with my mini and a standard USB five button Microsoft mouse (I seem to have a history with Microsoft mice, it is widely accepted that they make exceedingly good mice)

I bought the iCurve to see if it lives up to the hype and when I tried it albeit briefly at home, the mac book pro seriously did appear to be floating on my desk. I look forward to trying it in situ on Monday. I will write more then.

Where did all the space go ?

Well I get this warning, "Your startup disk is almost full". I KNOW! 100 gigs filled, litterally full...



I set about copying them to my external backup disk - which has about 20 gigs free after a clone of the main disk.



Once that had finished I could delete the files from the iTunes library, this does mean I can't play them from the library anymore, I have to find them myself. Quite whether I'm going to keep them long term, I imagine over time it could get to be an exponential curve - with no payback because there isn't a real searching mechanism, podzinger has a damn good try and I think I was told google video was supposed to be searchable inside the movies, but I never tried it.



It was at this point I found out that there is no mechanism for organising your podcasts. Yes iTunes can delete the old ones. It can store the unplayed episodes. I will even store a set number prior to deletion up to 10.



iTunes won't annoyingly allow you to move x episodes to an external location for archiving. Whilst I realise this is a symptom of my hoarding instict it is still none the less an issue I think needs addressing.

I suppose that I don't need to keep episodes past playing them, I occasionally refer to previous episodes in the recent past - a demo of an app I want to show a colleague, some bench marking etc.

Stats

Well I turned on stats back in March and I was having a look at them day... basically the graph goes up = I'm happy. Keep up the good work.



With great power comes great responsibility. I have recieved my first piece of comment spam, I can't find which post it is in so I can't delete it. Does this mean my blog has hit the mainstream that spamming advertisers think they're gonna get some click through from my site... poor deluded fools.

Your e-mail "plus" net = 700 gigs lost

Well I know some colleagues on plusnet and a family member, I do not know if they have been effected by this tragedy. From el Reg here apparently a more indepth analysis here

From this I can only shake my head and wonder... where the heck was the backup ? That's easy for me to say from someone who duplicates their main machine every week, see previous posts. And since where I work has recently gotten some new gorgeous backup kit... massively over the top but what the heck.

Macbook [sic] breached - cough, maybe - cough, fingers crossed...

OK I saw this article this AM. My first thought was, oh look at that a mac security scare, how come they've done it days before the WWDC - to generate shitty header copy for free. So I mainly ignored it and then when I read that they'd used a third party card, I completely whitewashed it. None of my colleagues in IT have questioned me or sent me e-mail links to the article with smug subject lines, yet - if they did I'd point to the fact that all macs come with WiFi built in and until a video comes out that shows the onboard WiFi getting waxed I'll hedge my bets that my machine is still one of the safest in the building. A building that doesn't even use WiFi hence my adapter is off during the day.

Considering the entire getting arrested for discovering a CISCO exploit at last years conference which was poo pooed by my colleagues despite being a) a helluva lot more serious and replicated b) a complete cover up by the industry then ensued. It will smack of hypocrasy if any hysteria comes my way.

So anyhow, I get home and I'm flicking through my RSS feeds and continuing to ignore the same rehashed copy of the main Washington Post article about a macbook [sic] getting hacked etc. etc. Much like it was when the open mac hack thing was "discovered" some months ago... Remember that, no, that's because it was a crock of s*** too... Sure have a user account on the machine you want to hack which we've doctored out of the box to make it less secure on the web. Complete FUD.

Then I spied two bloggers that I read religiously and one whom I've bought a membership for, yes I wanted the apparel. These two had disassembled the entire piece twice over. One with a fairly technical look (nothing really past year two of a computing course don't be too scared) and the second with a PR journalism hat on, making similar points to me about "Look a week before the WWDC what we can do". Both worth a read I am merely going to point to their articles and echo their superior prose in arguments next week. To join in with Grubber, I don't understand why they used a third party card if it catches out the built in WiFi - in one article / interview one of the "researchers" said they did it on a mac as a swipe at "Mac user base aura of smugness on security" if you wanna rub our noses in how terrifyingly unsecure our machines are... do that, don't ponce around using some third party junk manufactured at 12 cents an hour in Taiwan by a 12 year old (Never happens).

I've always said that the mac isn't perfect, heck if it were I wouldn't be up to security update number 4 this year. Even a trained chump can write some melicious code to destroy files on a machine. I stand by the fact that it's a damn sight more secure off the bat than your average home Windows box that Grandma has. Bored of the FUD now.

On a lighter note all the feeds (are they like the wires in the olden days ?) are carrying this beauty right now...



Leopard print OS X disk
64 bit sign, thought they'd trashed those after ditching the G5
NO iPhone... if they launch one, I'm selling a Sony K800i + XDA
I can see a bonjour symbol
A coffee, java cup
Near the XCode icon a little green thing ?
Some wierd thing above the spotlight icon
New iPod... sliver ?

Whatever is coming everyone is clearly very excited.... I encourage everyone to participate in WWDC bingo... not new but still fun.

iTunes being weird.

So close and yet still so far away...WWDC

I wish...

Well I'm sure the Englandshire public feel safer

Well I for one feel safer that the UK intelligence services have another method of letting the public know how afraid they should be. Along with http://www.secureyourfertiliser.gov.uk/ I hope my UK readers are carefully guarding their supplies of garden fertilizer incase Bin Laden comes' a knocking.

"Excuse me could I borrow several hundred pounds of garden chemicals, I'm just trying to grow some roses you see and I've heard I need about a metric ton to get the bloom to explode into color at just the right time."

I'm all for informing the public of a governments and security services actions, if our own NSA was concentrating more on working with US citizens instead of tapping their phone calls, we might not be four or five steps away from the totalitarian state that Kim Yung II would be proud of.