As I am sure you know, or do now, it is snowing once again in NYC and all across the East Coast. Here’s a shot (refreshes every 2 minutes) out my home office window… It’s ain’t purty, but it is a good reflection of what is happening out there.
Review: Sony Ericsson P800
The Real SliMP3
Would you like to stream your music collection to yourself, regardless of where you happen to be, home, work, internet cafe? I know I would… and now I can. The best part is that it was free and easy to do.
There has been a lot of talk about different tools to control iTunes from a remote system, but they all involve playing the music back out on the server, not where you are. SliMP3 solves that issue and takes it even further!
Here’s what you need for this project:
Dedicated, connected machine (Mac,Linux, or Windows) with MP3 collection connected or inside another computer, with an internet connection and an MP3 player and browser you might also consider the SliMP3 hardware which connects directly to your stereo…(you will need additiional networking gear, like a wifi bridge for this)
The app installs as a preference pane in OS X and can be set to run on login or startup, making it possible to access your tunes even if the machine is waiting for someone to login. Once it is installed, things get configured and run through your browser. If you have the hardware, you can remote control the hardware with the browser, or the supplied remote control. (I don’t have it yet…waiting on the digital-out version.) Once you set the location of your tunes, either with the location of you iTunes library — which it reads for Playlists! — or simply your music directory, you can begin a queue. In iTunes, you can open a new stream
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. You can create massive random shuffle lists by artist, genre whatever. It rocks!
A comprehensive overview was done by Tom’s Hardware, which covers the hardware and software in fantastic detail… There are also user and dev groups at Yahoo Groups — search for slimp3.
Conversation With Marc Andreessen
It’s been 10 years since Marc Andreessen and colleagues at the University of Illinois launched Mosaic, the first browser to navigate the World Wide Web.
But according to Andreessen, we’re still less than halfway through the generational cycle of adoption that will shape how we ultimately incorporate the Internet into our daily lives.
[Wired]
Hip Hop plushies
Matt sez, “a hip-hop video for DJ Format’s ‘We Know Something’ featuring plushies breakdancing. It’s the best thing ever.”Link
[Boing Boing]
absolutely hilarious!
New Universal Handsfree Device
Mobile Multimedia Messaging: the Next Killer App in Wireless?
While Multimedia messaging (MMS) is being touted as the next killer app in wireless, and carriers are pinning their hopes for a telecom recovery on this service, there are still major hurdles to be overcome.
Carriers are hoping that MMS, a multimedia successor to SMS that allows consumers to send picture messages and audio clips to each other, will match or even surpass the revenues and profits generated by the runaway success of SMS. [AlwaysOn Network]
Sprint, Verizon race on ‘push to talk’
The two carriers both plan to have a copycat of Nextel’s walkie-talkie feature this year. But who’s going to win the race for No. 2? [CNET News.com Communications]
Who will beat the latency issue first is what this race is really about. Only Nextel has figured out how to keep PTT connection timings between handsets less than a second even with a national range. More than than and the service becomes to frustrating to consider using.
Apple: New OS X 10.2.4 Feature – PDF Workflow
“In Mac OS X it is easy to save a document as a PDF file by simply opening the Print dialog and clicking the Save As PDF button. With the release of Mac OS X version 10.2.4, you now have the option to process the saved PDF file with AppleScript scripts that can perform a variety of tasks such as adding the saved file to a compressed archive, or including the PDF in an outgoing email message.” [AppleScript Info]
This is totally cool and yet completely frustrating. I can get this to work!
UPDATE – I had a space at the end of my Folder name which prevented these otherwise simple instructions from working. Doh!
Does Your CEO have a Weblog?
Mine does! Our CEO, Alan Meckler has started a blog. You can check it out here. I’d love to see all CEOs doing this, documenting what they are doing and why.
NYTimes.com gears ads to surfers’ habits
New York Times Digital, in a new test is letting advertisers reach visitors with demonstrated interests, in what could be a new dawn of personalized advertising on the Web. [CNET News.com Entertainment and Media]
You will now be able to be targeted by the personal information you’ve given the New York Times…
OS X 10.2.4 improvements…
I’m noticing immediate and significant performance improvements since the upgrade. I’m not sure whether it is from the Finder, or what, but so far this is great!
Mocean Worker at Apple SoHo tonight
Adam Dorn AKA Mocean Worker will be doing a music demo tonight at the Apple SoHo Store
UPDATE – I am really glad that I made it out for this. Adam was great even through technical difficulties with the Apple store set up. It’s always nice to see an expert use tools that you have messed around with but really weren’t sure what to do… Adam gave an overview of how to use Recycle and Reason and then move everything into Pro Tools. Totally cool. I just wish I had more talent!
Earphoria: Rendezvous music sharing for iTunes
A new app called Earphoria allows you to share your iTunes library over Rendezvous. It automatically discovers all the Earphoria users on your network and allows you to stream their MP3 collections.
Subscribing to a site from within Safari
Works like a champ!
One of my favorite features of NetNewsWire is that it’s scriptable. There’s even a Scripts menu, so you can add your own commands as scripts.
Here’s a little two-line script that lets you subscribe in NetNewsWire to the frontmost window in Safari.
tell application "Safari" to set s to URL of document 1 tell application "NetNewsWire" to subscribe to sIt gets the URL of the front window in Safari, then it tells NetNewsWire to subscribe to that URL.
When NetNewsWire gets a subscribe command it automatically does RSS auto-discovery.
In other words, you could just be on the home page of a weblog in Safari, run this script, then NetNewsWire will (most often) find the RSS feed for that weblog. (If it exists, of course.)
You could put this script in NetNewsWire’s Scripts menu, or maybe put it in the global Script Menu, or even put it in the Dock.
And then there you have it, an easy way to subscribe to a site in NetNewsWire while you’re in Safari.
(By the way, you could probably modify the first line of this script to work with other browsers. It may not even need modification except for the name of the application.)
Mail.app won’t hide?
Just wondering if anyone else ever has this problem…
I have noticed that Mail.app does not like to hide. Of course, it does not happen all the time, but when it does it is very frustrating. This seems to happen with both the key command shortcut as well as the menu. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
UPDATE – I have been noticing that the app tends to “hide” the viewer window leaving Mail.app the active application.
Update…Now everything seems to be working… so frustrating!
Post 10.2.4 all seems well
Scrobbler collaborative filtering for iTunes
iScrobbler is a MacOS X port of AudioScrobbler — the media-player plugin that collaboratively filters your playlists with other users. It’s still under development, but it looks like it’ll be available for download RSN.
T-Mobile (Danger) Sidekick FREE!
The only thing keeping me from rushing to do this right now is that I only have one hand to use with it for the time being. It would be very difficult to do e-mail with only my left hand. Argh!
Color must right around the corner if this is finally free…
With Amazon and T-Mobile rebates, the Danger Sidekick and camera attachment is now free with a one-year service plan. Link)
Safari Beta 2-12-03
In case somehow you missed it…
The fastest and easiest-to-use web browser ever for the Mac. [Mac OS X Hot Downloads]
A Baby Picture of the Universe Tell its Age
Animation showing how the structure of the universe evolved from WMAP’s “baby picture” of the Big Bang. Matter clumps under the force of gravity, then the first stars ignite, and finally the structures of galaxies form. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team /WMAP Science Team (5 Mb QuickTime file)
NASA today released the best “baby picture” of the Universe ever taken, containing such stunning detail that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years.
The new cosmic portrait — capturing the afterglow of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background — was taken by scientists using NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky.
“We’ve captured the infant Universe in sharp focus, and from this portrait we can now describe the Universe with unprecedented accuracy,” said Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Md., and the WMAP Principal Investigator. “The data are solid, a real gold mine.”
One of the biggest surprises revealed in the data is that the first generation of stars to shine in the Universe ignited only 200 million years after the Big Bang, much earlier than many scientists had expected.
In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the Universe at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably small 1 percent margin of error.
[NASA]