All Forces

Could this be true? My heart is racing at the thought of it. But why not an iPod instead? So many questions, so many Apple rumors.

Keeping my iTunes music library properly tagged and with it’s corresponding album covers is not only necessary to me, it is borderline obsession. Of course, if I was to buy all my music from iTunes then I wouldn’t have this problem, since it all comes prepackaged with the track’s info and album cover. But I do have a huge collection of CDs, I’m not fond of DRM restrictions and there’s the occasional internet mp3 downloads that come bare bones. When ripping a CD, iTunes automatically gets all the album track info if connected online, but there are those rare occasions when I am ripping but am not connected online. For this, I have my iTunes tagging workflow that automatically gets my tags and images with the help of quicksilver, dashboard and applescript.

Step 1: Download and install the requirements:

Amazon Album Art Widget ( download ) - Widget by Widget Foundry
CDDB Safari Kit ( download ) - Applescript by Doug Adams
QuickSilver ( download ) - by Black Tree
Gracenote Quicksilver URL ( bookmark ) - just add to your bookmarks
Safari - comes with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger ( buy )

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I got a frantic call from my wife who’s visiting my sister in NY. It seems her iBook has that forever spinning wheel we’ve all had to face at some point or another. After talking to her, I deducted it was a corrupt image in her iPhoto library. Probably from her last import. It’s happened twice before. The problem is that although she’s a digital lifestyle junkie, she relies on me to fix any technical issues and I’m in LA. So I venture out online to see if I can tap into her computer remotely and was delighted to find out Timbuktu’s new Skype ‘tunnel’ feature. The New Timbuktu Pro uses Skype’s connection to pass through routers and firewalls and establish a direct connection. In the past, you could only connect remotely if you had a static IP address, something most people don’t have. Best of all, you can connect to a Mac or a PC.

So here’s a tutorial on how to connect remotely to another computer over the internet with Timbuktu and Skype.

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The marketing wheel for Windows Vista is starting to roll. For the few of you who don’t know anything about it, Windows Vista will be the equivalent of what Mac OS X was to Mac OS 9. It will be huge upgrade from the inside out With lots of nee technologies at the core system level that are meant to make Windows more Pro-Creative friendly.

Just so you get an idea f the magnitude of Vista, a few months ago I got an email from a friend of mine who’s in the industry. A few things where left out per his request, but here’s most of it. He’s a Mac user.

Trusted designer / developer extended family -

The user experience tides are turning…

I just returned from a 3 day stint with Microsoft. Microsoft just held their soft launch for upcoming Vista related technologies and what a show/showing it was!

The only thing I can compare my feelings during / after the Mix event to, would be the first time I saw Shockwave debuted at WebInnovation back in 1995! This is a serious disruptive point in our lives - all very very exciting…

// Key takeaways which will impact all of us in the community include:

- Microsoft spent 3 million dollars on the event / 1 million a day
- Microsoft flipped the airfare / hotel bills for the top Flash designer and developer community within the US / EU (+20 or so folk) to attend the event
- Adobe really has it’s work cut out for them to keep Flash/Flex competitive, Microsoft’s technology appears to be superior
- Atlas is quite robust and does everything and more Flex can dish out…
- Microsoft stated they will have 1 billion (total) devices (including mobile) WPF - WPF/E enabled in 2 years time; 600 million will be WPF (Full) enabled with GPU capabilities
- Microsoft will not ship WPF - WPF/E unless the Mac client is ready to go simultaneously
- Microsoft will have CTP ready by end of Q2 ‘06
- CTP estimated size for WPF 1.2 megs, but will grow larger with video / 3D support
- Microsoft committed to a Linux port of WPF/E and will have it ready by Q2 ‘07 (3rd parties to develop)
- Microsoft WPF (Full) - very impressive, both technologically and aesthetically; BBC Demo
- Microsoft publicly stated IE will have core engine support for SVG in IE7.x (most likely 7.2)
(power point presentation); they are currently working with Firefox, and others to ensure version / profile rolling compatibility
- Good lecture on user experience design for the Ten Foot UI (power point presentation)
- Expression tools not quite there yet, but Microsoft has finally done a good job in getting them usable for the creative pro market

Link: seewindowsvista.com
Link: Windows Vista on Flickr
Link: Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won’t Like About Windows Vista

One Laptop per Child has allegedly declined offers from Apple and Microsoft in favor of running open source software on their laptops. However, judging from a photo of one of the $100 laptops, the OS has strong similarities to Mac OS X. I personally don’t think it’s OS X. The icon sizes don’t have the uniformity of the Mac, but it sure looks similar from a distance. Another interesting thing happening is the possibility of selling these machines in the consumer market. hum….

Link: laptop.org

So here they are. The iBooks get the Intel treatment along with a slick new design that comes in black and white flavors. For an Apple geek, days like this, when Apple releases new products, is like like a holiday. It usually means I spend countless hours dissecting specs, reading commentaries online and discussing it with friends to no end. But since I am busy with some projects at hand, today I am doing a concise version of it.
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I love my tabbed Safari, Firefox, and Camino. Ever since Tiger came out I’ve been enjoying multiple sites in one window and it’s been spreading to other apps like my favorite text editor. SkEdit recently got the tab treatment amongst other things. Even iChat is tabbed now, although through a plugin. It’s a tabbed world and I am loving it. I am way more efficient and live with less clutter, a selected pet-peeve of mine. Now the last frontier would be the Finder. I really hope Apple develops this since I don’t know if this is something that is possible through a third party app.

Link: Tabbed finder mock up by Andy Budd
Link: Chax - iChat plugin

12 years ago I acquired this old Macintosh from Otis, the Art School I was attending to at the time. I used to work part time at the computer lab there and this little machine was sitting in a closet collecting dust until I asked to take it home. Since then I have never been able to use it for lack of an Operating System. It turns out, the OS, the applications and it’s documents all get saved to 400k floppies, something virtually impossible to find nowadays. And I was never really sure what model exactly this computer was since it just says Macintosh on it. I eventually gave up on the quest of finding floppies and the Mac was stored away in a closet. Going from apartment to apartment and finally to our current home’s garage. Last week I decided, after many years of retirement, it was time to open it up and see if I can pull a Serang by replacing the innards with that of an iMac SE and a flat display from an IBM ThinkPad.

To my surprise I found all these signatures inside the box and realized this was no ordinary vintage Mac, this was model M0001, the very first Macintosh model ever built. So now I have a dilemma, do I continue the original plan of hacking it? or do i restore it back to it’s 128k glory?

NOTE ADDED: When I say the very first Mac model I am saying the first generation of the Mac not the very first individual unit.

Got LOTS of pictures!
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