Steve Jobs Alter Ego?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
I thought that this reporter for USA Today (shown here on CNBC) looks a little too much like Steve Jobs himself.
Technology
iPhone Video
Friday, June 22, 2007
Apple today released a nearly 25 minute-long video about the iPhone demonstrating its use. There are two things that it confirmed to me. One, it seems be a great pocket-sized mac in the way that it handles email, the web and sms chatting. Second, I think that its going to be an awkward phone. The size and shape just don’t seem like something that I would want to carry everywhere.
Best Mice Ever
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
It may not be often that you give your mouse a lot of thought, but I just had one of those moments where I thought “Wow! What a great mouse." I use a Logitech VX when I’m portable and a Logitech MX at my desktop. These are basically the same mouse with some small differences that make each better for the environment they were designed to be used in. The key feature on both is a scroll wheel that is able to work (as many scroll wheels do) in a mode that sort of clicks as you scroll, and a mode that is unique where it is free to spin like the Price-is-right Big Wheel.
Intel Metro Laptop Video
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Of course Intel doesn’t make laptops, but they often put out demonstration technology that they hope hardware manufacturers will draw inspiration from and run with. Here is a new ultra-thin laptop with an e-ink display in the lid to allow checking of calendar, email etc without opening the computer. Powered by ScribeFire.
Office Suites / Replacements
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
First, Congratulations to Kirk Langer for his semi-annual posting. They are rare, but good. Concerning Sun’s committing a couple people to the aqua port of Open Office, I am not impressed. Sun makes me yawn almost as much as Microsoft. First, I know that Star/OpenOffice has been around for quite a few years now, but here’s some problems I have with it… What does Sun know about client applications? They make servers, an operating system and Java.
VT Tragedy on Wikipedia
Monday, April 16, 2007
It’s hard to say anything about this without sounding insensitive, but unfortunately Wikipedia sometimes shines when there are terrible events. Here is Wikipedia’s coverage of today’s shootings at Virginia Tech University.
Speed Test - Scooters, Village Point Mall, Omaha
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Shortest Contribute Version Ever?
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
I’m not sure how long Contribute 4 has been out, but it has not been a long time. Six months? I was surprised to see, during the Adobe CS3 launch event yesterday, that a new version of Contribute (Contribute CS3) was being bundled with the web studios. I wanted to give Adobe the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were just renaming the product, but after a visit to their web site it is clear that this is considered a full upgrade and an owner of version 4 has to pay the same to upgrade to this new version as an owner of any previous version.
Apollo Alpha Preview - lynda.com Online Training Library ™
Monday, March 19, 2007
Mike Chambers has a set of training/introduction videos up on Lynda. Apollo Alpha Preview - lynda.com Online Training Library ™
Adobe Apollo - Write Your Own Desktop Apps!
Monday, March 19, 2007
Adobe has released a public alpha of it’s upcoming Apollo development software / runtime. This looks to be an incredible technology with wild possibilities. With Apollo, HTML and Flex developers (among others) can write code as they usually do, but then have it compiled into a distributable application that people can run on their computers outside of a web browser. I really expect many cross-platform applications that are generally written in Java or even REALBasic to begin showing up in this environment instead.
Nintendo DS Browser - June 4
Saturday, March 10, 2007
In a story detailing how some Pokémon game will be the first to tie the Nintendo Wii and DS together, an upcoming schedule sets June 4th as the release date for the Nintendo DS web browser. I’m pretty excited to see how well this Opera browser runs on a DS compared to other available portable browsers.
53 CSS Techniques You Couldn't Live Without
Monday, February 19, 2007
Chris Pultz hit me with this incredible list of 53 CSS techniques. A couple of the methods listed here are duds, but most of them are fantastic. If you don’t do CSS yet, you should look through these to see what you’re missing. If you are on CSS, then get to using them! powered by performancing firefox
Apollo Demonstration
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Mike Potter from Adobe demonstrates Apollo at FlashInTO.
Microsoft "WPF/E" beta available for download!
Monday, February 5, 2007
Macintosh users can now download the “WPF/E” beta from microsoft. This allows Macintosh users to play files created by Microsoft’s new “Flash Killer” application Sparkle. Once you have installed it, the plugin works with both Safari and Firefox. You can see examples of it’s use here (note the first video in the second example where they talk about the number of Macs that have been appearing in Redmond). This is exciting only because it offers hope that whatever development platform content developers use in the future, the mac should be able to display them all.
Zoho Notebook Announcement
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Zoho has released their new notebook application as a part of the zoho suite and it looks uh… sweet (I had to do that). Anyway, it’s just another example of the best applications moving to the web.
Playstation 3 -- Too Cheap?!
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
The New York Times reports Sony blaming profit slides on subsidizing the cost of the Playstation 3 too much. Selling consoles at a loss is nothing new. Sony and Microsoft have both done this knowing that it will establish market-share and that they will easily make up the difference in game sales. There’s more to this than just getting consumers hooked on Playstation. They are using the launch as a way to make Blue Ray the dominant next-generation disk storage.
If Microsoft Designed the iPod Packaging
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
This is kind of old (as evidenced by the model of iPod shown) but its spot-on. The side with the man listening to headphones against a red background looks similar to the Zune packaging.
The Influence of TiVo
Thursday, January 18, 2007
This article on the O’Reilly Radar credits the TiVo with forcing cable companies to demand better equipment/interfaces from those that produce their set-top boxes. I think that a similar effect may be the best thing that will come from the release of the iPhone. While phones in other parts of the world, especially southeast asia, have seen dramatic improvements, phones in the united states have seen few interface improvements in recent years.
e-learning 2.0 Infiltrates the Classroom
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Here’s an article at read/write web with good information about some current web 2.0 e-learning products.
Bye Netflix!
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
We signed on with Netflix last summer sometime. During the time that we have been members, its been embarrassing how few movies we have watched for what we have paid in membership fees. Except viewing the Ken Burns baseball documentary (which I really enjoyed), I think we could have bought the movies that we watched for nearly the same price that we paid in membership dues. Today, Netflix announced that they will begin offering downloadable movies.
Cyberduck update - 2.7.2
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Cyberduck - the free ftp client for macintosh has been updated to 2.7.2
Apple TV - Reaction to a Reaction
Thursday, January 11, 2007
iPod Observer: Analyst is Skeptical of Apple TV I’m not saying that Apple TV is going to be a big hit. I really don’t know. I do think that this analyst is missing the point. The Jupiter analyst doesn’t see the point of such a device when one can get the content over the air or via cable/satellite. I think that the iTunes store coupled with Apple TV causes one to question the need for shelling out $50 to $100 or more each month on cable or satellite.
iPhone - Thoughts
Thursday, January 11, 2007
It’s been a day and a half since Steve bestowed the iPhone unto us. Here’s the thoughts that I’ve had on it. A souped-up nano seems like an odd choice for Apple's first widescreen video player It would be easy to drain a battery while flying and not have a phone when you get where you're going It would be nearly impossible to dial without seeing it. I hope that it either has a very good voice dialing feature or another way to very quickly dial someone in your favorites.
Verizon begins to show advantage of Flash integration
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Verizon and Adobe announced at the Max Conference last month that Verizon would begin putting Flash Lite on compatible phones. At the conference, it was spun as an advantage to flash game developers that would like a huge new audience to deploy their work to. Today’s BBC previews something much bigger however. Verizon has announced a deal that will allow VCast subscribers to watch YouTube videos on their phones. Potentially, these new phones will be able to start viewing content on any number of flash-powered video sites such as Google Video and Brightcove.
Useful tools this morning
Monday, November 27, 2006
I have really liked using textile for my post formatting as it provides easy to read and write code while also publishing very clean HTML. I have had problems with it when I mix HTML and Textile code as I do often on my web log. Textile's main alternative is similar language called Markdown. I have started working with it this morning and so far so good. First, I downloaded the markdown plugin for wordpress.
What is LaTeX?
Monday, November 27, 2006
I’ve seen references to it often, but have never really understood what it was. Besides learning that it is pronounced Lay-Tech (the x is the greek “chi”), this post explained it use and benefits better than anything else that I have seen. technorati tags:LaTeX
New CF Box
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
I've been working today on building a new LPS WWW box that will use ColdFusion as it's primary scripting language since the NetCloak that we have used for around 10 years has been discontinued. Here are some quick notes of things that I have either learned or been reminded of today. ColdFusion MX7 and lower do not work with Java 1.5 http://www.talkingtree.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/5/17/CFMX-MacOSX-JVM142 Getting ColdFusion to process html files is not hard, but was tricky to find
Non-Screen Media Styling
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
One of the greatest things about CSS is the ability to create styles for non-screen delivery. Digital-Web features has a new article called “CSS Styling for Print and Other Media”.
Google Code Search Adds ColdFusion
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Google’s code search allows visitors to search publicly accessible code for answers. It now includes ColdFusion. technorati tags:coldfusion, google
Fireworks Design Center at Adobe.com
Monday, November 20, 2006
Adobe has launched a new design center on their web site specifically for Fireworks. If you are looking to get the most out of Fireworks, this will be the place to stay tuned to. There’s already some neat articles up there including one on how to “Create a night scene with Fireworks” and “Creating lens flares using Fireworks”. Interested in participating in the Fireworks 9 beta? You can sign up for that also.