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I use NetNewsWire (currently Pro betas, though I use absolutely zero of the "Pro" features except for the expanded information available in the article listings) to stay in touch with, oh, 100 blogs or so. I use NNW to locate articles I'd like to read, and because I'm never 100% sure that the "description" being shown is the full article, I often like to visit the article at the author's "actual" blog (Web site).

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Here is an interesting Flash animation that illustrates in a comical fashion just what icons do when you're not looking.

Someone made a comment on a mailing list about the "uselesness" and the "outdatedness" of the Desktop on Mac OS X. Now, I'm not one of those kinds of people that litter my desktop with everything, but I do use it basically as my own private /tmp as well as my own little "to do" list. Aliases to projects I'm working on, images that need to find a home, things like that. I'm curious how everyone else uses their desktop. Feel free to leave comments.

A woman buying a laptop the other day when I was in an Apple store kept asking "Where is Windows? Where is Windows?" The staff attempted to explain to her that they run a different OS, but if she really wanted to, she could run Windows.

She finally realized that Windows was basically "missing" from the Mac.

She bought two. 🙂

Thanks to some inspiration from What Do I Know .org, I've now got a list of my most recent 42 iTunes songs on this site. Yeah, I borrowed some of the CSS too. It's okay. It's the Web! 🙂

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When the hell has an online petition ever worked? Here's the latest: "please, please, please Apple add tabbed browsing to Safari." I've never seen a petition work, and frankly, I think signing one immediately makes you look like a bit of a weenie. Will Apple add tabs to Safari? Maybe. Will this petition help? I really, really doubt it. Ugh. Here's something I would support: D'Arcy Norman's approach.

Here's a "bug" I submitted to Apple at the encouragement of Brad:

I would like to see Rendezvous bookmark lists. In other words, if I have a PowerBook and a desktop Mac on the same network, I should be able to hit up bookmarks on either machine. Also, iSync should be used to synchronize bookmarks across computers (and provide a backup). To my .Mac account AND my iPod (in case I'm at a friend's house and I want to get at my bookmarks).

Joel ("that" Joel) has an interesting article about the differences between Apple's "we'll surprise you" product releases and Microsoft's "yeah, it's coming... in a few years" methodology. He makes a few good points about competition and disappointing customers that have made me rethink how I handle the customer relations for Freshly Squeezed Software. I'll have to run it by the other two, so we'll see how that goes. 🙂 Hopefully they'll just read the blog and email or IM me with their thoughts.

It's a slow news day. I got quite a bit of work done, installed MovableType on one of my client's servers (Mac OS X Server 10.2.3 - I think 10.2.4 shipped today), and played around with some mockups. One of my clients, primarily a PC company, liked a mockup I did (at their direction) with lots of Mac OS X elements. Why would a PC company want to put a very "Mac" look to its site? Sure, I like the Mac and the design, but don't they risk alienating or perhaps even off (or confusing) at least some of their PC using customers?

Dave's coming over to watch Ed and West Wing, perhaps my two favorite television shows. Some girl, Kim, told me her favorite show was Friends. I'd have agreed with her (maybe)… five years ago. Funny how quickly tastes change. It's ok, I don't make any judgment about this person - and I still watch Friends every week (as well as Good Morning Miami, but don't blame me for that one, as I can relate to the main male character more than I should).

At least I'll get to eat some pizza…

From an unnamed source comes this, ahem, "gem:"

10.3 will be released later this year. It will move wholly to a metal-like interface, used consistently. It will feature a completely new (journaled) filesystem. The dock will be revised to allow more options, including a feature to put it into the menu bar (rather like LaunchBar). The Finder will be completely revamped, and be wholly replaceable. AppleWorks 7, re-written in Cocoa, will be released toward the latter part of the year. A new audio-editing tool will be previewed before MWSF next year. iPhoto Pro will be $49.99, and allow the user to store photos anywhere on their drive, and include a number of additional image manipulation options, and an SDK for others to create plugins. iCal and AddressBook will be Rendezvous enabled to facilitate group work. To support this, further extensions will be made to allow the creation of ad-hoc groups using a new admin utility. Apple will write their own Windows Media Player, and increasingly address integration with other Microsoft "standards". And probably most important of all, Grab.app will finally have the "Window" capture menu item enabled.

For the humor impaired, well, never mind. You're too hopeless as it is.

Aaron Swartz lists among his tips for book authors this one:

Donate to the public domain. Once you've recouped the cost of creating the book (and potentially the cost of writing your next one) please donate it to the public domain (i.e. give up your copyright). The copyright system was created only to increase the size of the public domain; please don't cheat the public by taking more of it than you need.

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GM expects to have the new Hy-Wire car in production by 2020. What the hell takes so long? Seriously. Nothing's gonna work the bugs out faster than getting these things into the hands of a bunch of early adopters in the early 2010's. Hell, I wish my next car was one of these things, partly for the novelty, partly for the savings on gas (and lack of reliance on it), partly because I'd have a new toy. Am I an early adopter? Do the Greeks have a good tragedy or two?

Safari usage has skyrocketed across the Web. Have a look at John Gruber's statistics, and then compare them to mine (I've pared mine down to just the Mac clients).

The past 24 hours:

Navigator/Mozilla               22
Omn                             82
Chimera                        234
Safari                         969

The numbers speak for themselves, I guess. Perhaps tabs really aren't that important. What is interesting, however, is that not a single person using IE for the Mac visited my site during that time frame.

Steven and John carry on a brief conversation about DMG (disk image) files on Mac OS X. The comments are interesting as well, so read up, boy (girl)!

Personally, my software company distributes software on DMG, and we haven't had any apparent lost sales. Unfortunately, I have to say apparent because we don't know how many sales we could have lost. Unfortunately, the presentation of the software is done nicely on a DMG, what with an EULA (end user license agreement) and all… More thought required.

I emailed someone I haven't talked to in about four or five (six?!?!) years today. Laura is one of the most beautiful women I've ever known. She's one of the few people from high school I wish I still talked to (perhaps I will again soon), but most people… well I just don't care. If you weren't close with someone in an earlier stage of life, I'm not sure I see the point in going out of your way to try to get that closeness later.

Needless to say, there are a few people I wish I talked to more. Last I heard, Carey was living in Pittsburgh with some wealthy guy she married a few months after meeting him. Amy has supposedly popped out a few kids. Amy 2 is probably still living in China or Japan. I'd talk to Heather more often if she responded to email every now and then. 🙂 Beyond that, well, hell, I don't even know if I'll go to my reunion. If I do, it would be to satisfy my own curiosity about whether my predictions turned out right or not. If anyone wants to judge my life against their own, well, that's their problem. It's not a reason I'll be at a reuinion.

The Apple stores have in their iTunes library a rotating set of music. Currently, a few tracks from Lisa Loeb's Hello Lisa album are included, and they're always the ones I demonstrate (crisp guitars and higher pitched vocals demonstrate Harmon Kardon speakers well, with enough drums and whatnot to show off the iSub and SoundStick subwoofers).

Today I dropped by Circuit City and picked up three of Lisa's albums (I guess that's all of them?). I think both her and Natalie Imbruglia are underrated, but had a hit song or two apiece. At any rate, they're both getting heavy play over the next few days.

Tourists visiting the quiet town of Soap Lake, WA may soon find that the town has "erected" a giant lava lamp in the center of town to attract them (tourists, not erections). Talk about "is that your lava lamp or are you just happy to see me" at a commerce office level.

I wonder how long, after it's built, it will take some moron to drive into it drunk late at night, causing a hot oil flood. Or shoot it. Or try to tip it over. It wouldn't be pretty.