Just look at it.
Yes, it looks beautiful. And yes, I really want to believe Steve Jobs when he says “I’m an audiophile, and I’m getting rid of my stereo”.
But can something that size really make up for a 2-speaker separates system, or a 5.1 surround sound system? Or is it just another Bose Wave?
However, I think it’s a fantastic addition to their iPod/AirPort Extreme digitally compatible home entertainment range. And at the end of the day: it would look fantastic under the television, and for £249 you can’t go wrong.
Edit. You could always make one.
In other keynote news, I think the Intel Mac Mini looks pretty sweet (with built in remote, AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth). But at £449 (1.5GHz Intel Core Solo) and £599 (1.66GHz Intel Core Duo) it somewhat defeats the point of the Mac Mini.
You can read Engadget’s live account here.
Tags: iPod, Apple, Mac.
There is an excellently made video doing the rounds at the moment, depicting Microsoft’s unique approach to marketing. Aesthetics have never been their strong point.
You can see it here.
PS. Whilst I’m on the subject of Microsoft, have you heard about the Vista editions? All six of them!
What are they thinking? It’s madness! They aren’t an open source company!
Does this mean updates are going to be three times less frequent? And basic PC packages aren’t even going to come with that Aero interface? I like Microsoft, but I can’t get my head around their methods. I mean, worthless “backup” disks instead of installation disks?
Grr.
Tags: iPod, Apple, Mac, Microsoft, Vista.
I just logged onto MySpace, and saw someone I go to university with had posted this:
“i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs rpsoet it.”
Yeah. You couldn’t get away with that in XML!
I’m a sucker for statistics, charts and graphs.
I look at statistics, and try to develop my own assumtions, and pick out patterns in my head. For example, I can look at my site statistics and see that 50% of my visitors spend less that 30 seconds on the blog, and seeing as about 75% of the visitors come from search engines and land on short blogs (Ones where I’m saying “Look at this” or “Download this” or “Look what I found…”) and read them, and either follow my links or go back to the search engine - which means either my blogs aren’t “sticky” or I am following the 30 Second Rule.
Last.fm, as most of you will know, gives you statistics from iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player etc, via an AudioScrobler plugin. Last.fm tells me that my overall (from the last 3 weeks) most played band is Sonic Youth (142 plays), and I have played a total of 1383 tracks.
But the problem is that these are just the songs I have ripped to iTunes, which are from CD’s, and I quite often listen to stuff on vinyl. And then there are mix CD’s I have, which are made from MP3’s, so I can’t automaticly find the titles, so I don’t rip them (like the wealth of French/Japanese pop my uncle has burned for me.). I’m also on a move a lot, so I use an iPod.
Maybe the page should read: “*Records I listen to when I am at the computer that I have actually got on my hard drive.”
But I have really been enjoying these statistics recently, even if they are slightly flawed. Now everyone can know that I really dig Modest Mouse, and listen to The Specials on a regular basis.
This is an essential for any music elitist.
Here is something that might interest any web developers/designers looking to add an extra bit of pizzazz to their website.
24ways.org ran a series of tutorials from the 1st to the 24th of December (2005) ranging from basic “CSS Layout Starting Points” to Flickr style “Edit-in-Place with Ajax” methods - stuff you never thought you needed to know, until now.
Really, check it out.
Tags: ajax, web2.0, css, design, DOM.
I’m really busy at the moment. Yesterday (and this morning) I managed to get roped into building decking in the back garden, then I have this website I want to get finished before the end of “reading week” and the loose ends of some coursework to tie up.
I noticed that I’m getting a crazy amount of hits at the moment, mainly due to my Google ranking for “mark ronson just” (after my post on the 27th January) - Looking at the hostmasks, I think I should inform the network administrator at certain broadcasting corporations, video game producers, record labels and top universities.
Aren’t people supposed to be working?
Just to think, I abandoned JavaScript in 2000 because I thought it was “tacky” and “useless”.
It’s the Doc Martin boot of the Internet.
I don’t brandish the phrase “The most amazing thing I have ever seen” around very often - but this could be one of those moments.
Current touch screen technology is pretty weak. I remember touch screen Macs ten-fifteen years ago (Whenever my dad bought his Classic II - I stood playing with it for half an hour) and things haven’t moved on a great deal. It’s like using a mouse, but with your finger.
This example of “Bi-manual, multi-point, and multi-user interactions on a graphical interaction surface” is a cross between a tablet PC and a Korg Kaoss Pad. The demonstration is of a 36″ x 27″ panel that can be controlled by all fingers on both hands at the same time - no cursor, no scrolling, no thing you have ever seen before.
To Jeff Han and all involved at New York University - I salute you!
You can read more about it at the project’s website, and watch the video at YouTube.com
(Image credit: Jeff Han)
So, I came across this post on Slashdot, about how Apple supposedly wish to buy (leading PDA and smart-phone manufacturer) Palm.
Most of these rumors don’t lead anywhere, or to a product that hardly touches the obvious qualities we expect from each company - but I really hope that this one works out. With Apple’s success with the iPod (both technically and aesthetically brilliant) they could really add something to the already fantastic Palm series.
Anyone remember the Newton? Enough said.
You can read the original source at Personal Computer World, and read /.’s account here.
