October 15th, 2008 — Apple
A company called OLO Computer is working on a small laptop that’ll cradle your iPhone and allow you to use it with a large screen and full keyboard.
This thing looks cool. It just needs to:
I was thinking that the eeePC looks pretty neat, but this could be even nicer.
October 10th, 2008 — Politics
This is not surprising:
In the most unsurprising revelation imaginable, two former Army Reserve Arab linguists for the National Security Agency have said that they routinely eavesdropped on — “and recorded and transcribed” — the private telephone calls of American citizens who had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. The two former NSA employees, who came forward as part of journalist James Bamford’s forthcoming book on the NSA, intercepted calls as part of the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” whereby George Bush ordered the NSA in 2001 to eavesdrop on Americans’ calls in secret, without first obtaining judicial approval as required by the law (FISA). That illegal eavesdropping continued for at least six years — through 2007.
[From Major shock: Eavesdropping powers abused without oversight - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com]
It’s just sad. President Bush has done so much damage to our country in so many ways. This is why it’s disappointing that the clock has run out to impeach Bush.
October 6th, 2008 — Apple
Fantastic-looking new Mac-only, WebKit-based web browser from the creator of Fluid: Mecca.
User scripts and plugins make it more like Firefox. It has some really nice looking UI features.
October 1st, 2008 — Apple
While I generally agree that there is more than just openness to choosing between iPhone and Android, I do take issue with this quote in an article that compares iPhone development and Android development:
The first generation iPhone sold pretty well, but was only after the debut of tools like push email — intended for business use — that sales of the iPhone 3G soared.
[From Macworld | iPhone Central | Opinion: iPhone trumps Android]
To try to make the connection that the iPhone sales increased because of features like push mail completely ignores the fact that iPhone sales increased after the price dropped to $199. The ability to install new applications and a huge price drop undoubtedly did a lot more to grow iPhone sales than push email.
September 30th, 2008 — Apple
ScreenAction Studio is a $16 screencasting tool that sounds like it has a lot of features. I find it a little disturbing, though, that they don’t have any screencasts or even screenshots. But take a look at that feature list:
Screen Capture:
– Captures & records on-screen actions
– Highlight key points using a fixed, smooth, auto panning, or scrolling camera
– Change cameras live during capture
– Record with date & time
– Record with audio, or add voice-overs & music
– Control the size & frame rate of your movie capture
– Splice multiple segments into one full length movie
– Add transitions for a smooth project flow
– Supports all popular movie & audio formatsVideo Editing:
– Select any spot in your Action History to revert your project to that point
– Special effects & filters make your project a “big budget” production
– Widescreen & Fullscreen movie settings
– Add text, captions & credit effects
– Audio scrubber & mixer
– Loop & repeat options
– Paint & Draw directly on your frames
– Group & ungroup your project clips
– Blending modes
– Unlimited undos
– Color & lighting control
– Picture-in-Picture (PIP)
– DV & FireWire support
– Script & brush editor for advanced users[From Mien Software]
I’ll probably have to give it a try one of these days, but it will be hard to convince me to move away from ScreenFlow.
September 30th, 2008 — Politics
September 30th, 2008 — Money
Does anyone doubt that at some point soon Congress is going to pass a bailout? Sure, they didn’t pass the bailout yesterday but another bill will come along to take its place. In the meantime, stocks fell between 5 and 10% depending on the index you are looking at. It seems likely to me that Wall Street is going to come roaring right back just as soon as the bailout bill passes. What do you think? Is a 5% return over one week a pretty good deal?
Update: It’s not really surprising that people are back to buying today after yesterday’s massive selloff.
September 29th, 2008 — Politics
The Huffington Post starts off with this fun recap of last week’s campaigning for John McCain:
Last week was probably the worst week of the campaign for John McCain, and this week seems to be starting off equally rocky. In recent days, McCain has stated that the fundamentals of the economy are strong while the stock market was crashing. He “suspended” his campaign and canceled his debate appearance while purchasing web ads saying he “won” the debate before he announced that he would participate in the debate after all. He canceled an appearance on Letterman, stating he was “on his way to the airport” to race back to DC to help avert economic catastrophe, while he actually went to another nearby CBS building to be interviewed by Katie Couric (he actually did not leave NYC until the following day after giving a morning talk).
[From Dawn Teo: McCain: Palin's Conversations Not Indicative Of Her Positions]
and ends with a humdinger:
In all due respect, people going around and with sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that’s a person’s position. It’s a free country, but I don’t think most people think that’s a definitive policy statement by Governor Palin, and I would hope you wouldn’t either.
While it’s certainly not a definitive policy statement, you wouldn’t expect someone to say something that’s completely contrary to what they believe.
