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Cyndicate got 5/5 in its review at ThinkMac.

So, I fire up Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet addition to iWork's suite of productivity apps, and my productivity falls through the floor.

Where the hell is "Fill Down"? How can I copy a formula and paste it into a bunch of cells?

Sure, I can drag the little circle down. That works… but why isn't this a menu item ("Fill Down") or a capability of paste? Why does "paste" only paste the formula into one cell when I have 140 selected?

Version 1.0.2 is now available for download!

Changes since 1.0.1:

• Added an option to set the default toolbar action for the Share This item to any of the options.
• Added a dock menu item to fetch new articles.
• Added a menu item to the article preview pane's contextual menu to show linked content.
• Added [[articleColorName]] and [[feedColorName]] keys to the StyleSheet template.
• Fixed an issue where new articles would not always appear right away in the feed view.
• Fixed an issue with filtering on fetch when an filter contained a folder that no longer exists.
• Fixed an issue that resulted from re-subscribing to a feed that is returning a 304.
• Fixed an issue that lead to negative new article counts in the feed view.
• Fixed a number of issues with the AppleScript support.
• Changed the column sorting to be based on the user location ordering rules.
• Changed the sorting order of the article state column to Unread, Changed, Read instead of Changed, Unread, Read.

AppleScript support, by the way, is much improved over PulpFiction's AS support. Give it a try.

P.S. The update also includes another stylesheet, "Dark," that I developed over the past few days.

I told John Gruber last week that The Talk Show podcast should have chapters. I was told Dan Benjamin wanted to stick with MP3 over AAC.

Thoughts?

So I'm getting an iPhone… but I don't plan to get AT&T at all. I don't even want to sign up and then have to cancel nor do I want to go on a pay-as-you-go plan.

I also want to avoid potential future "bricking" as much as possible and would like to leave open the option to use the phone with AT&T at a later date (particularly if they complete their buyout of Cellular One).

I've seen a few options out there re: "activating" and "unlocking" the phone. The iPhone Dev Wiki people have only one task remaining, and that's to truly "unlock" the iPhone (which would be ideal, particularly if Cellular One has a reasonbly priced unlimited data plan).

What are your thoughts on the current best way to do this? Should I wait a few weeks to see what the iPhone Dev Wiki people do or should I activate using this method or something else entirely?

No, this isn't a turn of phrase or anything silly. Take it literally:

I do. Mmm mmm good. I don't know why you'd want to eat it without salt.

Cyndicate 1.0.2 is coming along on Monday of next week. In addition to a funny registration bug (it would display negative day counts), a negative count, some stylesheet fixes, and other little bugs, there's a minor speed bump and other small fixes included.

If you've set your Cyndicate's update preferences to check daily, you should see this update pretty quickly on Monday. Gotta love Sparkle.

P.S. Now's a great time to work on your own theme for Cyndicate. Instructions are here… Soon, depending on interest, we're going to have a special section on the Cyndicate site for displaying and downloading styles.

My new "aluminum" Apple keyboard arrived today and, after installing the 1.1 update, I rebooted and put the keyboard to use.

I've long used Apple's standard keyboards, from the Extended to the black and then the white USB keyboards. I've liked their feel and always felt I had to adjust somewhat to typing on my laptops if for no other reason than my posture and the position of my hands were different.

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Aaron asks a good question in the comments of another post:

.Mac Web Gallery is spiffy, but what if I wanted to publish the gallery to a private domain off of Apple's servers? I could maybe embed the gallery page into my own website (use a frame or something), but it would break the visual style of my site (currently default WordPress K2, but working on a custom theme for later this month), and it may not even be possible - although I haven't tried yet. With the old iPhoto, you could export "to Web Page" and then tweak and upload it wherever you wanted. I think you can still do that too, but the Flashed up web gallery is so much snazzier.

Anybody know if it is possible to get your web gallery published to a private domain/server?

It's a good enough question that I thought I'd post it here.

And for the record, I don't think Aaron is asking that everything be portable - like emailing to add photos, synchronization, etc. I think he's just asking about the actual gallery and method of displaying photos.

Ecto 3 has been released in alpha form, and I'm giving it a try.

First, some good things: ecto 3 seems to care more about WordPress than ecto 2, including the addition of a "slug" and a "password" field. I like the new look and I have to believe I'll like the plugin architecture as we move forward. I like that ecto 3 uses a different data set so I can test it concurrently with my daily ecto 2 use.

The preview window's absence is puzzling. Ecto can't seem to remember that I prefer to edit in HTML mode and, when it does, annoys me by putting the <p> tags in my text. I don't like the inclusion of the "Extended Entry" in a disclosable area with "Summary" and "Extra." I don't really care for the manner in which you adjust the time (by grabbing the hands of an old-style clock), though I do like the effect of dimming the screen for things like Word Count, Adjust Time, etc. The "save as draft" and "allow comments/trackbacks" buttons in the lower left are going to need to be made far more visible as well.

I've not run into many bugs yet, but I have seen some small bugs. That's to be expected, as the software is not yet beta let alone release candidate. And by small, I do mean small: the "Import Media" toolbar button has a tooltip that says "Calculate Text Statistics," for example.

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I'm sure I'll have more to say about iPhoto 7 (or iPhoto '08, whichever you prefer to call it) later, but my initial reaction was one of dismay. The "both at both ends""hidden" scroll bar setting doesn't work very well with iPhoto.

iPhoto did, fortunately, import my old "film rolls" the way I would expect - by making each film roll into an event. Since I'd basically been doing this anyway, it worked out well. I was annoyed that I could not select all of my film rolls (or events) and hit cmd-left arrow to collapse them all in the "Photos" view, but I did get to answer the age-old question: "How long does it take to click 258 disclosure triangles in various locations?"

My first .Mac Web Gallery was published. I think that link should work. I like 'em.

Barry Bonds used to play in Pittsburgh. It's incredibly obvious to me and virtually everyone outside of the San Francisco Bay area that Bonds took some sort of drugs - be they steroids, human growth hormone, or something else - to enhance his performance on the baseball field.

Though he technically didn't "cheat" because he's never been caught and steroids weren't illegal until recently, many - myself included - have a broader description of "cheating" than "not getting caught and doing substances before they become illegal." I believe in the purity of sport. It's an admittedly blurry line: I have no problem with cortisone shots to numb pain, for example, which you could argue "enhances performance," but which to me is an entirely different kind of "enhancement."

Barry Bonds likely won't make the hall of fame right away simply because he's been such an asshole to journalists, but that's not really what the question below asks. It's more of a "positive" or "negative" poll, and the two choices are all I could think of to represent the options.

I think the Giants are likely to ditch Bonds and all the problems and costs he brings to the team at the end of this year.

P.S. I'm glad Hank Aaron chose to be classy about the whole thing, but I'm really rooting for Alex Rodriguez and even Ken Griffey, Jr. to break Barry's "record."

P.P.S. No, I've still not forgiven Barry for sucking during the Pirates playoff runs in 1990-1992.

Episode 38 of Allen Rockwell's podcast covers a topic I've thought about off and on for a few months: photographers "devaluing" their own work by giving away photography to local newspapers, websites, friends, stock photo sites, etc. It's a bone of contention for professional photographers, and one I've given some serious thought to since becoming a bit more serious about photography earlier this year.

Yet nothing I've read on the subject has convinced me that pro photographers have a legitimate beef. Pros argue that amateur photographers are putting them out of work and simultaneously disrespecting themselves by not getting the money they could get from some of their images. Pros point to sites like iStockPhoto - where images of good or great quality can be had for a dollar or so - and pronounce them abominations that are ruining their careers.

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Steve Jobs mentioned Panasonics AVC-HD (the HDC-SD1) HD camcorder which records high-quality HD video to an 8GB SD card in his keynote.

The specs page says the camera has a high-speed shutter: 1/60th to 1/8,000th seconds.

But it doesn't list the framerate. Currently, to record my golf swing (for analysis), I record on my Canon SD550 (still camera). It does 60 frames per second (more than the 30 most DV cameras offer) at 320 x 240.

At $999 (or is it $799 as Jobs said somewhere?), I'm mildly interested in getting back to shooting video… and a little more interested if it can do 60 FPS (or higher) at any resolutions above 320 x 240.

Cyndicate (and Scorecard) users should make sure they drop in to the Cynical Peak Forum.