January 2008
187 posts
Light at the end of the tunnel →
NOTICE:
In a drive to save on electricity consumption, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off till further notice.
Kindly postpone all hopes and dreams…
We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Eskom Management
Tags: electricity, consumption, Eskom, CFL, Compact fluorescent lamp, load shedding
E-government: one size doesn’t fit all but its... →
Microsoft’s well publicised release of its “Citizen Service Platform” claims to introduce easy e-government. The basis of that claim is the use “templates”.
Templates are standard programs which assume that all governments are the same, and that they all operate in similar cultural, legal and technological environments. Thats a useful assumption if you want to write one program and sell it to...
Switched On: Apple TV gets its second audition →
Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/Switched_On_Apple_TV_gets_its_second_audition_2';
Apple TV was overwhelmed by the introduction of the iPhone at the Macworld 2007 keynote, but the little set-top device has been the recipient of a...
Chandler: No Version 1.0 After 7 Years - Can it... →
Chandler is an open source, cross platform PIM (Personal Information Manager) product that has been in development since 2001, but has yet to get to a 1.0 version and has changed product strategies several times over the years. The organization building it is called Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) and it has been funded to date by largely one person: Mitch Kapor, who is famous for...
Quick Tip of the Week: Using Data Detectors →
Data detectors—a new feature in Leopard Mail—lets you quickly create a new contact in your Address Book, map an address, or create an iCal event. How does it work and how can you take advantage of the data detectors in Mail? Watch the latest Quick Tip of the Week to find out.
Announcing two-way status sync between Pulse and... →
We soft-launched a “status” feature in Pulse about a week ago, and it’s already proving to be very popular. But for people using lots of different services, having yet another place to type in what they’re up to is hardly a convenience. Indeed, if you’ve been following the Plaxo story closely, you know that we’re not trying to build “yet another social network”. Instead, we’re on a mission to...
Qtrax goes "live," tracks nowhere to be found →
Filed under: Portable Audio
Sorry to disappoint, but Qtrax is falling just a bit short of its promised 25 million tracks at launch. Qtrax busted out its software in “beta” this evening, but isn’t offering a single song — or even a working music browser. The application is a barely skinned version of the open source Mozilla-based Songbird music player, which has certainly...
What Dataportability.org Wont Fix →
Humans. If you want to save the read, the answer is: humans. Systems and software and all the sluices we build in the data stream won’t change the way humans see themselves, the way they construct their own feelings, the way they form groups, alliances, arguments, disagreements and then reform new versions of the same. As we are, so shall we always be. Humans, frail, flawed, and on a crazy path...
Restore Your Data with Time Machine [Backup... →
Of course you know all about Time Machine’s marquee feature—the ability to browse your files back in time—but Blogger James Duncan Davidson details Time machine’s equally-excellent-in-its-simplicity feature: restoring an entire system after a hard drive crash. The process is painless. Simply boot from the Leopard install disc with a fresh hard drive in place of your crashed drive;...
Twitter - Public Timeline = Prologue →
Perhaps we can call this one a de-mashup? Automattic has apparently been recently bit by the Twitter bug (as predicted by our very own Kristen Nicole), and has become inspired by the format to create something that caters a bit towards the group blogging community, it would appear. The functionality of the system is that it creates mini-Twitter groups on the domain of your choice (separate from...
Qtrax: ‘Where By ‘All’ the Major Music Labels, We... →
P2P music distribution site snookered Wired and Reuters into publishing stories touting their new ad-based music distribution system with support from all four major labels; after stories go out, it turns out they have signed deals with none of the labels.
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Queen Bee simplifies billing tasks for 37signals... →
From Signal vs. Noise: Queen Bee is the name of our new, internal, unified billing, admin, and stats platform. Here’s an example of how it will make things easier for customers: So, let’s say you have two Basecamp accounts and a Highrise account and you want to update your credit card because it’s about to expire. Before Queen Bee you’d have to log into each account...
Can Facebook Own the Social Graph? →
Yesterday’s big news was that Facebook has expanded their platform to the general web. According to developers, this service was already accessible via backend methods but there is now a client facing version. Regardless of the technical aspect of Facebook’s new JavaScript service, their intentions are clear: Facebook wants to own the social graph. At the Graphing Social Patterns conference last...
Sound waves snuff fire →
In 1857, Irish scientist John Tyndall recognized that sound waves could extinguish flames. Now, scientists hope that phenomena could lead to the development of new fire extinguishers that would be useful, say, in a spacecraft or terrestrially to avoid water damage from sprinklers. First though, they need to figure out why exactly sound can snuff fire. Most likely, the sound wave causes a drop in...
Kaazing Turns Browsers Into Real-Time Apps →
Kaazing at DEMO today is launching an enterprise software platform that lets companies build reliable, two-way messaging atop web networks. Think Tibco over Firefox. And while it sounds like enterprise-grade software, it can in fact drive a new generation of real-time Rich Internet Applications. Enterprises have massive communications needs. Banks have to proactively push messages out to...
Old ad suggests caffeine triggers child abuse →
Spike Priggen of Bedazzled found this funny old ad that shows how an uptight dad stopped beating his child after switching to decaffeinated Sanka. Link
SEO in 2008: Upwardly Mobile →
In a recent interview with Matt Cutts, he was asked what he reckoned would be the most important aspects of SEO in 2008. Surprise, surprise, he noted the most important element to be fresh, quality content - and lots of it.
Number two on his list of insider tips for the year was personalisation - knowing your target audience and supplying them with what they’re looking for. And with that comes...
Traditional power shortage opens a window to our... →
Perhaps the present power hysteria will deliver the required kick in the sweets to get local architects, designers and developers to update their ideas on sustainable energy design. The Solar Ark [pictured above] was built for Sanyo, and is an impressive 630 kW solar-collecting building that boasts over 5,000
solar panels and kicks off over 500,000 kWh of energy per year and is built...
Skype On the Go →
If there’s one ongoing user request from Skype users, it’s: “How can I access Skype from my mobile device?” Along with the associated question: “If I can make free calls via Skype on a PC platform, why can’t I do it on mobile devices?” Enlightened as a result of discussions with both Skype personnel and hardware partner vendors at the recent CES in Las Vegas, I wanted to provide an overview. The...
Find a shared vision, v2.0 →
It was an interesting election until the Clintons started calling Obama the nice young African-American candidate. Yeah, I lived in the south long enough to understand what that means. When I went to Tulane I was often explained as soandso’s Jewish friend Dave. It meant that I could come over for dinner, but there would never be a marriage.
I should say The Old South. The problem for the...
Restoring your Mac from a Time Machine backup →
Filed under: Blogging, Leopard
Time Machine is probably the defining feature in Mac OS X Leopard. It provides a nice, clean interface for you to backup and restore your files; but did you know you can also restore your computer from the Time Machine backup? When you insert the Leopard install disk and boot off of it you will be presented with a semi-Mac OS X desktop. In the menu bar, select...
Selected text in NetNewsWire + MarsEdit →
Disruptive Conversations: “What’s very cool is that if you select/highlight a block of text before clicking the button you get only that part brought across into MarsEdit. So if there is a paragraph you want to include in your post, simply highlight the paragraph, click the button and you’re off and blogging.”
Biblical events as retold by Google Earth →
In “God’s Eye View,” Sydney-based art collective The Glue Society portrays four major Biblical events as if captured by Google Earth: “Cross, Moses, Ark, Eden.”
Creative Review blog says the group “is aiming to produce further works using the same satellite imagery next year but this time relating to mythological occurrences and major historical...
Law firms should learn to love social network... →
Stole that subject line from, ‘Learn to Love Social Network Sites,’ Mary Braid’s story in this morning’s Sunday Times about how corporations benefit by helping collaboration and the spread of ideas through employees use of social networks. As Krishna De, a leading Irish branding strategist and my source for this post, points out, the article even cites the case of the...
Helvetica (the film) →
Yesterday I returned to Osaka from Tokyo on the Shinkansen. As usual I grabbed a delicious ekiben and a bottle of tea before I rushed on the train and settled down for a relaxing 2.5 hour, high-speed trip back home through the Japanese countryside. Somewhere after Yokohama I unwrapped the bento, pulled out my MacBook Pro, inserted the DVD and kicked back to watch a documentary film called...
Amazon MP3 store to spread DRM-free love global in... →
Filed under: Portable Audio
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/music/Amazon_MP3_store_spreading_DRM_free_love_global_in_2008'; In perhaps the biggest threat to Apple’s global dominance of digital music, Amazon just announced the international rollout of Amazon MP3. Right, the on-line storefront offering DRM-free music from all four major labels. That’s 3.3 million songs (priced at...
Namibian ghost-town turning back into sand-dunes →
Check out these haunting and beautiful photos and video of the abandoned Namibian town of Kolmanskop, a ghost-town that is turning back into sand-dunes.
Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, Luederitz was plunged into diamond fever and people rushed into the Namib desert hoping to make an easy fortune. Within two years, a...
What happens to blog-posts after you click Publish →
Wired has a tasty infographic showing what happens to a blog-post after you click “publish” — all the scrapers, bots, ad-servers, splogs and bloggers who read and process it. Link (via YPulse)
Obama: a generational candidate →
A brief politics break here. Four years ago, I did a lot more blogging about the presidential primaries, but found myself bouncing from candidate to candidate: Howard Dean, Wesley Clark before settling on John Kerry in the general election. This cycle, I was leaning toward John Edwards (who would make a great attorney general) before coming around to Barack Obama. I believe he’s the only...
Qtrax Launches: Free and Legal Music Downloads... →
The long-delayed but much-anticipated service from Qtrax is finally going to launch - supposedly going live this Sunday at 12:00 am Eastern. Qtrax, in case you haven’t heard, is a P2P file sharing network that has been in the works for eight years. However, it’s not just any P2P file-sharing network - it’s the world’s first free and legal P2P file-sharing network that has...
How Last.fm Will Create "Communities Around... →
Earlier this week we reported that leading online music service Last.fm, owned by CBS, had gotten major labels on board for its new streaming music services. Users will be able to stream full-length tracks from the likes of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner, as well as “thousands of independent artists and labels.”
In the following post syndicated from last100, our network blog...
Thank you Yossi Vardi →
Yossi Vardi has made my time here in Davos simply incredible. I am in deeply in his debt for what he’s personally done for me. The Shabbat dinner he took me to last night was simply incredible. I filmed an intimate traditional ceremony there. It is the one video I’m keeping for myself and I will treasure those moments more than my walk with Mark Zuckerberg.
How special was that? Well, Klaus...
Copyright Now Extends To Cease-And-Desist Letters? →
Apparently even the cease-and-desist letters sent to sites to inform them to stop violating copyrights are now - copyrighted.
TechDirt is reporting an update to a case they first covered back in October where a lawyer tried to claim his cease-and-desist letters fell under a copyright, and thus no one could legally reprint them without his express permission. The people’s advocacy group, Public...
NYC trying to fast-track legislation to police... →
Ken sez, “The Village Voice has a great overview of a uber-nanny NYPD’s deputy commissioner (of counterterrorism, natch) attempt to fast-track a piece of legislation that would make mere possession of many sensors, from Geiger counters to asbestos detectors, illegal without a police permit. Send you to jail, illegal, too. Luckily, dozens of university researchers, public-health...
Primer on copyright liability and fair use →
Citizen Media Law Project: Primer on Copyright Liability and Fair Use. David Ardia discusses it on the IdeaLab blog. From the primer’s conclusion:
While there is no definitive test for determining whether your use of
another’s copyrighted work is a fair use, there are several things you
can do to minimize your risk of copyright liability:
Use only as much of the copyrighted work...
An online storm over a call to a school... →
Washington Post: Student’s Snow-Day Plea Triggers an Online Storm. A fascinating call-and-response story for our time:
Snow days, kids and school officials have always been a delicate mix. But a phone call to a Fairfax County public school administrator’s home last week about a snow day — or lack of one — has taken on a life of its own. Through the ubiquity of Facebook...
Google Reader Now Includes the Published Timestamp... →
Wanna know how long it took Google Reader to show you that post? Hover over the time stamp on the upper right hand side to get a tool tip that displays the published timestamp and the time GReader received the item. Recently Adam made a good case for using a desktop newsreader over a web-based one, and the lack of delay was the biggest advantage. (On the desktop, you hit refresh and you get the...
MacBook Air review →
Filed under: Features, Laptops
It fits in a manila folder, you can slide it under a door, and if you threw it hard enough you could probably chop someone in half with the thing. It’s the thinnest, and if we may say so, sexiest laptop around today: the MacBook Air. But looks aren’t everything to everyone, and despite all the rhetoric about being a no-compromises ultraportable, Apple...
MacBook Air review →
Filed under: Features, Laptops
It fits in a manila folder, you can slide it under a door, and if you threw it hard enough you could probably chop someone in half with the thing. It’s the thinnest, and if we may say so, sexiest laptop around today: the MacBook Air. But looks aren’t everything to everyone, and despite all the rhetoric about being a no-compromises ultraportable, Apple...
Bring Flickr to Your Desktop with 1001 [Featured... →
Mac OS X only: Freeware application 1001 is a desktop Flickr client that handles Flickr uploads, image viewing, and notifies you whenever new pics are uploaded (whether from your contacts or a tag you’re following). In essence, 1001 is an attempt to take Flickr out of your browser and make it into a much more desktop-oriented affair. You can either browse 1001 actively or leave it running in...
Are you keeping your clients dependent by trying... →
My two and a half year-old son Josh is constantly trying to rescue people. If he sees someone distressed on the news, or a child crying at the mall, he will turn to me with a serious look on his face and say “Mom! I am going to save them!” He then evokes the spirit of his favorite superhero of the moment (alternating between Spiderman and a Power Ranger), throws his fists in the...
Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr on Google OpenSocial →
At the recent OpenSocial Hackathon, hosted by SixApart, Google’s Patrick Chanezon interviewed Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr. Among his questions, “You saw a spike in growth when you announced support for OpenSocial. Has the strong growth continued?”
Alchemist author cites piracy as a reason for his... →
Perhaps you’ve heard of Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian author of The Alchemist. Perhaps you’ve heard of him because you downloaded one of his books from his own “Pirate Coelho” Web site, which he says is responsible for boosting his yearly Russian sales numbers from around 1,000 to 100,000. He contributes that dramatic increase to his Web site, where he offers downloadable copies of his books in...
Pull and Format Text from PDFs with PDFTextOnline... →
We’ve previously pointed out ways to grab just the text from a PDF by emailing Adobe and using desktop apps, but having a web-based solution bookmarked could be pretty helpful as well. PDFTextOnline is a free, no-registration web app that quickly accepts files and pushes them to plain text, available for copying or saving as a .txt file. The added bonus is being able to change both the font...
Hold on to your gold →
The more this power crisis hits home, the harder I find it to see any silver lining to the huge dark cloud that covers South Africa right now. The golden lining, however, you just can’t miss.
I have always resisted pessimism, because I didn’t think that the socialist tendencies of the government were crisis-level serious. I thought they weren’t particularly good at generating growth, or creating...
The 4th Annual South African Blog Awards →
In new media / Web 2.0 / social media terms, the words ‘4th Annual’ are pretty exceptional. Very few things - apps, campaigns, services - last for long at all so I’m pretty proud of our very own South African blog awards and that fact that despite some resistance to the process last year, they’re back again and rearing to go…
Credit to Jon Cherry and the team for the new look site. Nominations...
SA Blog Awards 2008: New Rules, New Categories,... →
The 2008 SA Blog Awards team met at Caffe Neo to discuss the changes being made to the rules and review all suggestions received from the community. Tim & I were there to fly the Quirk flag.
For those who could not attend the event, there were a few attendees live-blogging with Twitter and the meet was streamed live using Qik mobile phone video streaming.
This year one of the new rules is...
First Flight: OmniFocus →
Warning: a “First Flight” is an ongoing log of my impressions and experiences during my first and VERY first launch of a new app. You are reading exactly what I’m thinking when I’m thinking it, during my first ten or twenty minutes of hands-on experience with the thing.
I do think it’s valuable to document these things. True, true: you can’t possibly reach any conclusions about the nature of an...
“Quantum of Solace” →
The project, known till now simply as “James Bond 22″, has finally been christened with a fancy new moniker and a dull-looking poster. And like 2006’s blockbuster Casino Royale, it’s slated for a November release.
The story in the new film begins just an hour after the last one ends.
[According to Daniel Craig,] “There’s much more action in this film compared to the last film. There’s...
Why Copyright? →
Last Friday, I had the opportunity to deliver a talk to the Canadian University Press National Conference, a gathering of student journalists from across the country. The talk was a long response to a question that comes up pretty regularly - why has copyright generated so much interest from so many people. A podcast of the talk is available here. The slides are posted below.
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