a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
You can share the music on your iPod as if it was a playlist in iTunes over your local network which works well – exactly as you would expect it to.
You just need Music Publisher. Drag your iPod to the app’s preference panel (I had to switch the port from 3689 to 3690) and voíla! Thanks to Jason Snell on the SliMP3 mailing list for the tip!
“RFID is a game changer for retailers, manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies to name just a few of the impacted industries,” Sun executive vice president Jonathan Schwartz said in a statement. “Sun is committed to providing open, standards-based RFID middleware software that leverages our Sun Java Enterprise System.”
RFID (define) technology allows manufacturers, retailers, logistics providers, and other organizations to “tag” physical goods with tiny radio transponders that can then be used to identify the goods without having to visually inspect them. Applications for the technology include automatic inventory management for retailers and manufacturers, improved supply chain efficiency for logistics companies and their customers, and better tracking of goods to reduce theft and loss. [internetnews.com]
Cross platform iChatAV??
America Online is quietly testing a video feature for its instant-messaging products now that the government has lifted restrictions against launching such a feature. [CNET News.com]
Is Microsoft’s new version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, a radical innovation or a return to the company’s winner-take-all software strategy from a decade ago?
Longhorn, which had its official coming-out party last week, marks Microsoft’s return to “fat client” application development–software that resides largely on desktop or portable PCs rather than on a shared server or network. The company is even considering phasing out the development of a stand-alone browser, instead building Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Web-based applications that would run directly in Longhorn as “native” Windows code.
The result would be “increased lock-in to Windows,” said Michael Silver, an analyst at market research firm Gartner. “Microsoft wants enterprises to write browser applications that take advantage of Longhorn application programming interfaces (APIs), which means that they won’t work on non-Longhorn browsers,” Silver wrote in a research report last week.
With Longhorn, some industry veterans believe, Microsoft is attempting to steer software development back toward the Windows desktop and away from software such as browser applications that can run on other companies’ OSes. Longhorn reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to the notion of powerful desktop machines that have large hard drives. [CNET News.com]
Joy of joys for mail.app users who filter their mail: Mail Enhancer changes the unread mail figure in the dock to include all your mailboxes, and not just the in-box. Does other stuff too. Free. Ace.
This rocks. If not just for the total unread count…
Fortunately my host offers webmail access to email, which is a great way to get to your mail when away from your computer. It is also a great way to be able to send when your company turns off Port 25. ;(
Squirrelmail, which is the software I have access to, refreshes on a nice short interval and can even notify me of new messages with a sound or a simple change in the name of the tab I am leaving open in Safari. While not as good as any POP or IMAP client you might have, it gets the job done and plays within the rules at work.
Whoa – one cool thing I just noticed as I was clearing out some spam is that you can block receipt requests when you open or check messages.
Sitepoint on what a wiki is…[courtesy of Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]
iTunes Catalog is a new app that will create a visual catalog of your iTunes library in HTML, PDF or XML. It has the ability to download artwork for albums automatically and apply them to your files. Looks promising… I am playing with the demo now… the full version costs $9.95.
My first subscription arrived last night for Zinio and I have to say I continue to be impressed by how this works. I was able to sign up for a year of electronic delivery by filling out a quick marketing survey… usually the kind reserved for controlled circulation publications. The best part of the electronic delivery is that my issue actually arrived early. I really like Business Week and enjoy reading through it each week, but hate that it does not always arrive on Friday as I expect. In fact often times it does not come until Monday well after content is posted on the web site.
I still have yet to pay for an issue, but so far Zinio continues to be a cool way to read. Hopefully their model will continue to support my free loading.
While I really like the manner in which bookmarks are handled, I’d like to see the search box have the ability to search your bookmarks and history file – or possibly the addition of a search box just for bookmarks. Firebird has this within the sidebar, another bit I would not mind see coming over to Safari either…
When they write the account of the 2004 campaign, it will include at least one word that has never appeared in any presidential history: blog. Whether or not it elects the next president, the blog may be the first innovation from the Internet to make a real difference in election politics. But to see just why requires a bit of careful attention. [Wired News]
While many media applications run in external viewers these days – think the separate RealOne player – Mr Berners-Lee is concerned that by making all inline content apps subject to patent, it would effectively wipeout millions, billions of webpages that form the history of the Web.
How? Because the people that own the patent, Eolas Technologies Inc, decided they would use their patent to sue Microsoft, claiming infringement in Internet Explorer. In August, a judge agreed and awarded Eolas $521 million. Microsoft is currently appealing the decision but it has already made clear it plans to redesign Explorer to bypass the patent.
Berners-Lee is no friend of Microsoft, particularly since Explorer regularly steamrollers over the W3C efforts to build international standard consensus by including its own proprietary features. However in this case, he is infuriated by companies attempting to claim ownership of parts of the system he helped build just to sue other companies and build a fat bank balance. If Explorer does change, it will not be backwards compatible – another nasty precedent that W3C is desperate to avoid.
Boinx Software has announced the release of iRecordNow 1.0, new software that offers an easy way to use an iSight FireWire camera to record video… [MacMinute]
“Panther has a cool feature that allows you to set keyboard shortcuts for pretty much any application, including iTunes. However, one thing I discovered is that you can set keyboard shortcuts to the AppleScripts in your iTunes Scripts Menu. [macscripter.net news]
Something I will certainly have to deal with when my system gets Panther… This would be a great and simple way to initiate my connection with my SliMP3.
Rogue Amoeba Software has announced Nicecast, an new application to broadcast music using Mac OS X: … [MacNN]
This looks outrageous! You can broadcast any audio from your Mac with this and then tune in yourself or tell others – across any platform.
Update – Gave this a shot tonight and was a bit under-whelmed. First the good… it looks REALLY pretty. It’s very simple to configure and get set up to stream. The bad… On my home network, the iMac was my server streaming to my Powerbook through iTunes. You open a URL (icy://ip-goes-here:8000) and you are streaming whatever is playing in iTunes on the server. I had some drop-outs which are not something I thought would happen given the number of times I’ve streamed music to myself at home and at work. I’ve done this using SliMP3 as well as remotely mounting my external drives and streaming as if connected locally to iTunes.
For some reason there is a delay in what you play. I was not aware this was the case until I manually changed tracks… I was unable to initiate a Mic either internal input with the iMac or with my Griffin iMate. I guess I could have tried the iSight, but frankly I did not think to try.
Seems like a lot to pay 40 bucks for this when my FREE slimp3 server software does a better job with no delay. PLUS, you can control what you listen to remotely without forcing the local machine to hear everything… did I forget to mention that part??? Unless you put the Mac on mute, you’ll be listening to the broadcast as well.
Just in time for Panther, one of my external drives started failing on me. This is sadly, not the first time this drive has crapped out. I took action and replaced it not wanting to risk losing the almost 80GB of music I’ve got archived there… I picked up a second La Cie D2 drive – 200GB – and consolidated my tunes which were spanned on both the 80 and another La Cie D2 120. Now all my music (all 134 GB) is in a single place which is nice so I have one folder neatly managed by iTunes – love that Advanced menu!
I wish I had a clue what was causing the issue on my drive… I was not able to maintain a finder based connection of any kind long enough to do a complete transfer. I tried moving through the finder and even FTP which worked mostly. I finally ended up resorting to rsync, whicih is an amazing tool. I was able to recursively copy all I had from two mega directories into a single one. I had never used it before, but I found all the help I needed with a bit of Google.
I suppose this is the now mandatory post on Panther… 😉
I upgraded our home machine last night without a hitch. All our user settings came over and having enabled Fast User Switching, we are very happy in general. Finder performance is much improved, which is worth the cost of entry in my book. Exposé is by far the coolest thing going. I can see using it continuously throughout all apps. I love how there is a key for the computer, (active apps) the active app itself and a quick shot to view the desktop. The new UI tweaks will take a bit to adjust, but certainly not difficult, in fact things seem to be designed to make life more efficient, even if at first you don’t agree, given how it used to work.
Junk Mail handling looks excellent and Mail has been designed to automatically pick up cues from filters you may use on the server level. Threading is a killer addition as is the ability to handle personal certs. I’ve signed up for mine… have you?
Minor gripe… I cannot get symbolic links working like I had previously to share our iTunes library across users. I used to run a symbolic link from the local iTunes folder to an external drive which allowed both users to share a library and playlists so any new music that was added became immediately available to both. For some reason I can’t get the right access privileges enabled to move or copy the Symbolic link from the drive to the user directory. At least not yet…
I tired to do a fast user switch while iTunes was playing and the music played until the Finder came into view on the second user. When I switched back, I noticed that iTunes had elegantly paused the music and I picked up exactly where I had left off.
All in all a terrific update. Even with a nit or two. I can’t wait to upgrade my powerbook… but I have to wait for my office to clear it. Very tempting sitting here with the discs…
Photoshop for the Camera Phone
Here’s a pretty swanky server-based image manipulation tool designed for photoshop-style image manipulation of (primarily) camera phone images. It is still in the pre-production stage (assumably that means it works, but hasn’t been cleanly integrated into the morass that is MMS image standards), but a cool idea nonetheless.
Similarly, Scalado’s PhotoFusion has an image manipulation app that runs on some nokia cell phones.
[Corante: Amateur Hour]
Imagine the possibilities…
Apple points to over 150 new features in Panther. Though many of these additions are aimed at the end user, a large number of changes in both client and server versions are targeted for enterprise customers, said Brian Croll, a senior director of product marketing for software at Apple. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]
Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) is out. I took a few screenshots and wrote up a few thoughts. OK, I took 100 screenshots and wrote up 11 pages. [dive into mark]