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  • 1 min read

Mystery Ball

Yesterday, this appeared on my Mac desktop: Picture 2-5 Here's a little movie showing you what it does. http://s3.media.squarespace.com/production/1075723/12829350/weblogs/weblog/images/mysteryball.mov.mov Pretty weird. It's like a UFO. I don't know where it came from or what it does. Is it a virus? Spyware? Some undiscoverable bit of Mac UI? If you know, please, people want to know!

Update: Intrepid reader Duncan Wilcox identified this as the "Floating Expose Blob"! Huh? I don't know what I did to turn this thing on, and indeed, it is yet another undiscoverable bit of Mac UI. Now I like the Mac as much as the next guy, but what's up with all these hidden features? Technorati Tags: mac, UI

  • 1 min read

Really good article about the music business

Robin Good points to: "The Myth of The Rock Star and of the Need To Sing-up For a Major Recording Label":

"Music" does not equal "compact disc". Music is data. It doesn't matter whether you burn it to a CD or rip it to an iPod or a Memory Stick or store it on your hard drive. It's still music. Take a minute to internalize this concept. Once you get past the notion that music has to come in the form of a shiny little Frisbee that retails for $16.99 at your local MegaSuperMusicPavilion, certain other truths that once seemed self-evident begin to unravel -- such as the idea that the only way to become a successful musician is by signing a recording contract with a giant corporation." (from "Burn Down the House")

Read the whole thing. It's enlightening. Technorati Tags: music

  • 1 min read

Cellphone GPS: How does it work?

My new cellphone supposedly has GPS capabilities. It has to do, apparently with the new E-911 standard, which requires a cell phone to be able to tell emergency responders where a cell call is coming from. I'm a pretty big GPS aficionado and I thought GPSs had to have these big ugly antennas, complex expensive circuitry, and lots of software. I don't understand how all that stuff can be crammed into a tiny little phone. So I got to thinking that they were just using the term 'GPS' loosely , and that instead what was going on is a much more simplistic triangulation between cell towers which, I suppose could produce a rough location reading. Apparently I was wrong! Now, here come Sprint and Garmin, with a turn-by-turn navigation application that runs on my new phone. It looks pretty cool! What a rip-off : $9.99 per month! I can 't wait to try it 🙂 Technorati Tags: cool, cooltool, gps

  • 1 min read

New Orleans

I've been away for several days, while following the catastrophe in the gulf unfolding, via TV and radio. I (yes oddly) didn't have internet access but thought to myself that there would be lots of very interesting blog posts covering the events from a unique angle. And indeed, now that I came across these two perspectives:

Technorati Tags: katrina

  • 1 min read

Who will buy Skype, and why…

Robert Cringely has a relatively little known quasi blog , for some reason on www.pbs.org. The stuff is generally very good, and little noted. Given Microsoft's recent acquisition of Teleo, this recent post about Skype is interesting and timely:

Expect Skype to be sold, another viral marketing success sucked up by big business. Expect it to go to either a major broadband provider or, more likely, to a big mobile carrier with no fixed telephone assets. And whoever buys Skype, expect them to throw money into making the company into even more of a multinational telecom headache than it currently is. (from Skyed on I, Cringely - read the whole thing!)

There even is a very well hidden RSS feed. (Yes, remember the Cringley column in PC Week? Same guy!) Technorati Tags: microsoft, voip

  • 1 min read

[QUASI-GEEK] Dan Bricklin describes how fiber to the home is installed in the real world

At a level of detail only a geek could love reading (or bother writing), Dan Bricklin gives us an interesting and fun illustrated story of installing Verizon fiber to his home: "…… Once that was all done, the installer cleaned up all the dropped wire insulation, empty boxes, etc., and we said goodbye sometime around 4 PM. I then connected my line to the router and plugged it into my laptop upstairs. Things work well." (from "Installing Verizon FIOS fiber-optic Internet service to my house") I do have one question about the Terms of Service: I ordered the 15Mbps down/2Mbps up service which has a list price of $49.95 a month before the discount. (They also have 5/2 for $39.95 and 30/5 for $199.95.)Terms of service say they "do not permit customers to host any type of server, personal or commercial". You know what they mean (maybe) but they do say it wrong (in an Internet application, each side often plays the part of a "server" as well as "client" -- they are using lay terms in a legal document)." What exactly does anyone think people will use 2Mbps upstream bandwidth for?… Technorati Tags: danbricklin, verizon