The Golden State wins its first antispam judgment, against marketing firm PW Marketing. The company is fined $2 million under a 1998 statute; the state expects spammers will be easier to prosecute under its tougher new law. [Wired News]
New Drive…
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.
Panther
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
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…
Hand-size Windows PCs within your grasp
Start-up Antelope Technologies is getting ready to release the Modular Computing Core, a Windows XP computer that fits into a person’s hand. [CNET News.com]
WOW – this is a very cool idea!
Knee Defender
A new product, the Knee Defender, keeps the person in the airline seat in front of you from leaning their seat back. I really want this, not because I’m a tall person (far from it!) but because I’d like the person sitting in front of me ask before they can lean their seat back. I’ve come close to having a smashed laptop too many times now. [Backup Brain]
Spammers Clog Up the Blogs
Ever searching for paying customers, spammers have turned their attention to blogs, where they mass-post target URLs in the comments section. [Wired News]
Apple Panther Aims at Enterprise Compatibility
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]
Google Launches Local Search Targeting For AdWords
Google has rolled out a new Regional Targeting feature that lets advertisers have their AdWords ads appear in front of those searching from specific local areas in the United States. [Search Engine Watch]
Dive into Panther…
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]
Craig Barrett: Inside Intel’s future
Will Intel ever be able to crack Apple?
We keep trying, but frankly it gets less and less interesting each year. When they were 10 percent of the market it was a more interesting issue. But at 2 percent of the market…our sales can blip 2 percent quarter on quarter, so we can shrink or grow by a couple of Apples. There are lots of interesting aspects in there. Steve (Jobs) is trying to appeal more to the Intel base. You might ask why he doesn’t take his OS and try to compete in the other 98 percent of the market. But he doesn’t choose to do that.
The OS X kernel runs just fine on Intel. Just a matter of the app stack to stick on top of that. But you’ll have to talk to Steve about that. We just try to get design wins with these guys. [ZDNet]
Stretched Out lets PowerBooks go wireless via CDMA
Stretched Out Software Inc. has released a Mac-compatible data driver for the Sierra Wireless AirCard 555 — a PC card that enables laptop computers to communicate through cellular telephone networks.
What’s more, Stretched out Software indicates that it’s working on a Mac OS X driver for Sierra’s AirCard 750, a tri-band card that supports global networks using GSM/GPRS. [MacCentral]
Apple readying ‘iTunes Producer’ for record labels
Apple is in the process of launching new applications and marketing tools for its iTunes Music Store that aim to make it easier for record labels and artists to sell and promote music on the service… [MacMinute]
This is very cool news and even includes a co-marketing budget if you reference the ITMS in your Google ad. Very Intel like… and very smart.
Survey Confirms It: Spam Sucks
A new report reveals what most had already suspected: People hate getting spam. And a number of them are using e-mail less frequently because of it. [Wired News]
CNN to use mobile polling
Very cool…
CNN is about to start using mobile phones to enable viewers to send in opinions and vote on questions using their mobiles… [textually.org]
Senate approves antispam bill
The U.S. Senate votes to outlaw deceptive spam and to set up a “do-not-spam” registry for those who do not want to receive unsolicited commercial e-mail. [CNET News.com]
It will be interesting to see how this is enforced for the really bad guys since they tend to fake all of their addressing info. Marketers better take notice and manage communication appropriately.
Random Image…
I spent some time tonight reading up at A List Apart and was immediately interested in implementing the tip (and code) for an image randomizer. As you can see (unless of course you are reading this in your aggregator), there are now images on the left side bar. So far I’ve got 16 in the folder… all shots I’ve taken in my travels. I have many more and will be adding more as I go. Enjoy!
Thanks to a very helpful tip from Chris, I’ve resized the images appropriately so loading should be nice and bandwidth won’t get too crazy too quickly.
Time Warner Cable tangles with DSL, dial-up
The company reports another quarter of sagging growth in broadband Internet, raising speculation that the high-speed cable access market is maturing and facing more competition. [CNET News.com]
If You’re Getting Tired Of Fighting Viruses, Consider a New Mac
Walt Mossberg…
For consumers and small businesses, the burden of using Microsoft Windows just keeps getting heavier. After growing easier to use for several years, Windows PCs have taken a giant step backward because they are so insecure.
Windows is riddled with security flaws, and new ones turn up regularly. It is increasingly susceptible to all kinds of viruses, malicious Trojan horse programs and spyware. As a result, Windows users have been forced to spend more of their time and money supporting their computers. [Wall Street Journal]
Sony, DoCoMo ally for smart-card chip
More on your Phone as Wallet…
The mobile communications company and Sony will team up to develop smart-card chips that will enable consumers to use their cell phones to pay for purchases, sources from the companies say. [CNET News.com]