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According to Technorati, this blog is worth $100,000. If anyone is interested, I offer flexible financing and am willing to barter. 😉

Scott points out that iTunes 6 has lost the "sheen" or reflection added in iTunes 5, and he's correct.

The iTunes Music store employs a lovely little reflection on its videos in preview mode, but the video loses the reflectivity when playing:

What a great opportunity to use CoreVideo! I mean, c'mon Apple, put some effort into it! The videos in the store would look so much better with that lovely little reflection.

Since my resource forks were blown away by Backup, a lot of the iMovies I've kept on disk failed to work because all of the "Clip"s in the Media folder were wiped of their creator code and file type. If I added ".dv" to the files, iMovie complained that it could not locate the files.

So, SetFile -t 'dvc!' -c 'Hway' Clip* worked fine. Pain in the butt, granted, but at least my movies work again.

Does NerdTV not have a video podcast feed you can use in iTunes? When I try to subscribe to http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/rss/nerdtv.xml in iTunes I'm told that I cannot. I think having multiple enclosures (entire show, nerdy bit, juicy bit) confuses iTunes. Do each have their own feed as well?

Well, it's officially an iTunes Music Store, Video Edition lunch for me today. Another question: why can't I download trailers via the store for play on my iPod? It seems like a logical extension.

I can download movies from http://apple.com/quicktime/trailers/ and convert them for use on the iPod. Why can't Apple provide "iPod Trailers" within the iTunes Music Store alongside the regular movies?

Safari's Automator actions include the ability to download images from a web page but not .mov files. I have an AppleScript that will pull the .mov file's URL out - I wonder if I can get it to work with the "Download URLs" Automator action…?

Also, the "Export to iPod" action does not appear in Automator. I've even tried building it from the source myself. It just doesn't appear.

Question: Have you bought any iTunes videos yet?

My Answer: I have not. I was tempted to grab the Pixar shorts, but I don't really want to look at my iPod to see them. I don't have any commutes, so the TV shows don't interest me (and I only watch one of them regularly anyway). The music videos may hold the most appeal, but I'm curious as to the audio quality of music videos.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I can see people buying TV shows for their iPod. Heck, if I had a commute, I'd buy some TV shows to watch going and coming to work.

But I think music videos may be the bigger catch, the bigger draw. They're dual-purpose, in fact: if the music video comes up in a random playlist while you're in your car or jogging or whatever, the music plays regardless of whether you're looking at the video or not.

The question I have, then, is whether the music in the video is the same quality as the individually downloadable songs. And, regardless of whether it is or isn't, do you think Apple should include the individual song file when you purchase the music video?

I do. If I buy a music video, I'd like to have the full-quality song available. I don't want to spend $2.98 to get both. Why would I want the song separately? It's easier to work with (adding a tune to an iMovie, etc.).

It's now available.

Last night Carey and I watched an international edition of "House Hunters." It featured some guy living with his girlfriend while looking for a small flat or home in the UK somewhere near her.

The show explained that there are two options for home ownership in the UK: "free hold" where you own the house and the land and can do as you please, and "lease hold" where you are technically leasing the land for something like 120 years and cannot make any big modifications to the house or land without consent of the true owner.

Carey and I thought that the Lease Hold may be a ripoff, but on second thought, I thought that it might be similar to renting with the benefit of building equity.

So what's the truth? Any UK readers (I know you're out there - you've responded to the "leave the car running" post), what's the real story? How's the whole free/lease hold system work? I'm curious.

While requesting my (lost) license for Trans Lucy so that I could watch Lords of Dogtown today, I saw that CE Software is now called "Startly Technologies" (eh?) and that they had a product called "Docktopus" that could basically put useful little badges on your dock icons.

I was very interested in two of the items, the CPU meter and the Memory usage. The rest are either useless or simply don't work with the software I use ("Mail Peek" works only with Mail).

I gave it a try and the CPU meter worked nicely, but the Memory module was so small that I couldn't read the numbers. I wonder if a later version couldn't do something like change the application name from "Safari" (for example) to "Safari (412 MB)" or something like that.

Docktopus, like many utilities like this, has a lot of potential but really isn't up to snuff.

Today I attempted to use the Apple iTMS Link Maker to make a search template for LaunchBar and the iTunes Music Store, but that didn't go anywhere. Then I remembered that I had blogged about itms:// links. That post contained the information I needed. So, here for those who care is a LaunchBar template for searching the iTunes Music Store:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/com.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction/search?term=*

I've called it "iTunes Music Store" in LaunchBar's search templates and I can access it by typing "itms" (though I had to train LaunchBar - IMDB came up the first two times I tried it).

Today as I was running a very quick errand - a task that takes two to three minutes - I considered leaving the car running. People do this all the time, like when they want to run inside their house to grab the coupon they forgot or their cell phone or whatever, or when they want to run into a gas station to grab a pack of smokes or whatever. The problem with leaving your car running is that you really should lock it or else it's pretty easy to steal.

I've heard that turning on your car uses about five minutes' worth of gas.

So imagine this: I pull up somewhere, press a button that keeps the car running for five minutes, grab my stuff (say, envelopes to mail), and then take my keys out of the ignition and lock the car. If I don't return within five minutes, the car shuts off. Without the key it cannot be unlocked or shifted from park.

It's safer than leaving your keys in the car and it saves gas. Right? Go ahead and tell me why this idea is stupid, because aside from reasons that include "some idiot" and "lawsuit," I can't really think of any right now.

Question: What do you think of the nude/sex tv show being aired at UC San Diego?

My Answer: I'm fine with it. If people don't want to watch, don't watch. I've always been in favor of having a more open society than one that's not. When I visited France, people were nude on TV in the middle of the day, and Europe has, historically, had far fewer problems with teen pregnancy, etc. I also applaud school officials for letting students decide what to do about content on the student-funded, student-run television station, regardless of the content.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Some student might soon be rich very for something he accidentally discovered. Very cool.

All I really discovered in chemistry lab is that one shot of pure ethanol sure does burn. And that Steve was stupid for not being able to guess that prior to drinking it. 😀