greenthinks

David Pogue today in the Times:

Ever since Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997 after a 12-year absence, his company has thrived by executing the same essential formula over and over: Find an exciting new technology whose complexity and cost keep it out of the average person’s life. Streamline it, mainstream it, strip away the geeky options. Take the credit. So far, Apple has worked this kind of magic on digital video editing, wireless networking, online music selling, R.S.S. feeds (a kind of Web site subscription) and other technologies. Its latest attempt, however, will be music to an awful lot of ears. With its release of the free iTunes 4.9 software for Mac and Windows, Apple has just mainstreamed podcasting.

Pretty accurate, if a bit snide.

...has been around since before podcasting. It’s Acts of Volition Radio, produced by Stephen Garrity from Charlottetown, PE, Canada.

Garrity does what radio DJ’s used to do – he plays tracks he’s discovered or has loved for years and talks about the bands and the music. Simple enough, but it really works and his taste is impeccable. I’m always excited when he includes something I’ve already found, but that’s rare – usually it’s an occassion to break out the ‘ole Amex and order some CD’s on Half.

Since he’s Canadian, he leans towards bands from north of the border, which is great, as there’s even less of a chance that I’ll be familiar with them already. His location also plays into the reason for his remaining uniqueness even now as podcasting is exploding. Garrity plays commercial music, and plays the songs in full. While this is not only illegal in the U.S. but is also being actively targeted by the authorities and their impish cohorts, the lawyers, it seems to still be gray area in Canada. It’s a good thing too, ‘cause it will be a sad day down here in NYC when Stephen Garrity stops doing Acts of Volition Radio.

Check it out.

Update: Subscribe in iTunes!

Update: Yeah, I’ve downloaded the H.264 version of the trailer. The only one that will work well on my computer (1.25 GHz AlBook) is the 480p. It truly is beautiful and does not in the least resemble what we’re used to in web video. Now we just need our hardware to catch up. I mean, just look at Apple’s stated recommended specs.

From Signal vs. Noise:

The most innovative software designed over the next 10 years will 1. be web-based, 2. will come from small teams, 3. will come from self-funded companies, and 4. will be for the “side-business” market.

Interesting. Are you running a side business?

The release of the actual movie logo is getting me quite excited. Also, in case you have not been following thus far, Bryan Singer and co. have been video blogging from the production.

Back towards the beginnging of July, Jon Udell wrote a piece on the dominance, nowadays, of typing into a text field on the web. He discussed the reasons why TEXTAREA is not optimal, and put forth some potential successors to the web typing mantle.

Yesterday I was reminded how much we really do need something better. A friend of mine was typing something up on Yahoo! Mail for over an hour, and by just accidentally hitting the wrong button, entire pages worth of work was gone. What about undo, I said—but alas, Internet Explorer 6 on Windows does not support Undo or Redo in TEXTAREA (or any other kind of text field). I decided to investigate what happens on the Mac…

Click here to see what happens in Safari or Firefox (sorry for the crappy quality of the video).

I have yet to check to make sure that this works on Firefox on Windows as well, though I think that’s a safe assumption.

Update: I checked, and it does indeed work fine on Firefox running on Windows.

The new Flash 8 beta breaks Flickr, but does improve performance considerably on Nikeid, and other heavy flash sites. Flickr uses flash for its slideshows, which v.8 will not show at all.

The beta does not improve performance to the extent that I was expecting from the earlier Macromedia demos. Also, since Apple insists on having Safari continue to loop flash ads, movies, and sites while a Safari window is minimized or hidden, flash still bogs down the OS much more than on Windows IMHO.