Quick is Key(words)

Tagging your photos is a grueling process, but the end result is magical. You feel so great when you type your friend's name into the search box and up pops all the pictures of them.

As an iPhoto user, I previously used KeywordAssistant because the tagging tools in iPhoto were just too slow. iPhoto '08 has fixed that. The new keyword tools are amazing. You can now easily enable keywords and tab between photos to fill in the keywords. I suggest using the View menu to enable keywords and disable everything else so you can quickly tab and type.



Even better, you can promote your most used keywords to your Quick Group. This will assign one letter quick keys to your keywords. Hit the letter to add the keyword, hit it again to remove it. You can tag hundreds of photos in minutes, all from the keyboard. I will use this a ton.

Presence Pitfalls

Away messages, busy icons, and green dots. Online presence is becoming common and people are relying on it more and more.

Outlook does a good job of tightly integrating Windows Messenger presence. If the person is in my Messenger client, I'll get presence icons in emails from them. This is nice, but I really don't find myself using it that much. What would really be useful to me is tight integration with the out of office reply.

Summer is the season of vacation. Every week there are a handful of people that I need to work with, but they are on vacation. I know this because the email I sent them came back with an out of office reply. That's great, but that information is just a blink. I read it, delete it, and then forget 2 hours later when they are returning to the office. How come Outlook, especially Exchange connected Outlook, can't integrate that presence? Make that icon work for me. Instead of an away icon, show me the out of office icon. Let me hover over it and see their out of office message.

While we're at it, if I'm sending a message labeled high priority or scheduling a meeting to a known out of office recipient, Outlook should warn me. Finally, you could take this out of office data and generate a report showing who is out for the current week. It would be very helpful. I can barely remember when I'm supposed to be on vacation. I don't know how I'm supposed to remember when you will be.

Note: I'm running Office 2003 at work, so if things have progressed since then, let me know and I'll retract my rant.

Design Touches in Apple's New Keyboard

I'm such a Mac geek. Check out the desing touches of the new Apple keyboard. I have to believe the designers have a pile of Apple gear at their disposal and the design isn't done until it looks good with all of it.

It's old school, but I still use it. When I plugged in my shuffle to sync, I found it fit perfectly in the gap between the keyboard and the desk surface.



Far more folks will have iPod docks ready to plug-in. Notice how the USB plug housing blends perfectly with the keyboard lines.





I love it.

5 of The Now

• Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass
  My love for Aesop Rock continues to grow. Mellow flow.


• Z-Trip (feat. Chali 2na) - Something Different
  Z-Trip production and Chali 2na on the mic? What's not to like? I think I could rock out listening to Chali 2na read the ingredients off a box of Cheerios. Also available on .


• Gui Boratto - Mr. Decay (Robert Babicz Universum Disco Mix)
  That's the stuff! I can't link directly, but you can get this at Beatport.com


• Filta - Abuse
  Great use of samples from the movie Taxi Driver. De Niro as Travis Brickle - here's a man that would not take it anymore. Placed in a proper mix, this one will grind your mind...in a good way.


• LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
  It's really hard to not fill this whole 5otn with tracks off of this album. Sound of Silver and Bloc Party's A Weekend in the City don't leave my CD changer. This 30 second sample does nothing for the track. You can get a little better feel with the video on iTunes, or screw all that and just watch it on YouTube.

iMac for Mother Earth

The new iMacs are out (yes!) and I couldn't help but notice how much Apple is highlighting the green aspects of the computer. Maybe it's because they've taken such a beating before, but perhaps it's just the new, kinder, gentler, Apple at work.

So where are the highlights? Well, the tech specs tout Energy Star compliance. Which version of Energy Star might be in debate. The standard recently changed and the old iMac was not compliant. You can check the list (Excel file), but it was mostly the Mac mini and the MacBook that met the new standards.

Apple also proudly states "The use of recyclable glass and aluminum makes iMac friendlier to the environment, too." on their design page.

To complete the link parade, don't forget to check out the environment section of Apple's website.

Drumming Your Fingers on a Table

Engadget has a rumor and purported images of a keyboard said to be ready for the upcoming iMac from Apple. The keyboard is stripped down to the bare essentials in materials but keeps the expected keys and even looks to add some function keys.

I'll assume this is the new keyboard. I like most of what I see. A few observations:

• The keys are like the ones found on the MacBook - I like the keys on the MacBook. Lots of folks dismissed the chiclet style keys, but I don't mind them. Then again, I don't mind the current Apple keyboards either, but if you read some Apple forums you'd find that plenty of people hate that keyboard. I used to be a keyboard snob and would only use a Microsoft natural board. I've since mellowed and even traded in my disgusting natural at work for a clean new Dell that seems to borrow some design cues from Apple.


• No Apple key - The Command key currently has an Apple logo on it. The trouble is, the Apple is never referred to in documentation. Users are told to hit the command key and keyboard shortcuts list the feature key logo. This is very confusing for switchers. At least it isn't like the old days with the closed apple key and the open apple key. Anyway, everyone is crying fake on the keyboard because the apple logo is gone. I'll interpret it as Apple drinking some of their own simplify juice and getting rid of the confusing icon for the key that is never called the apple key. Wouldn't it be great if Microsoft did the same and got rid of the silly Windows key?


• Design - I like the clean design and the design looks like it will be easier to keep clean! While the clear plastic enclosure on the current Apple keyboard looks nice, it's really just a window display for dirt and crud.


• Design Part 2 - By refining the keyboard down to its simplest form, Apple may be opening the door for 3rd parties again. One of the side effects of Apple's minimalist design is the non-minimals (what kind of word is that?) will accessorize the crap out of it. Look how many billions of dollars there are in the iPod accessories market. Do you like your keyboard to slant forward? No problem. Someone will come out with a slab of plastic that this keyboard will click in to. Like more USB ports? Sure, how about a glowing blue enclosure with 6 USB ports out the side. Want an iPod dock in your keyboard? Seems like that would be easy enough to mold in the plastic as well. Now, you won't be able to change the curve of the keyboard, but if that's your style, you wouldn't be happy with this keyboard anyway and would already know what you like (see earlier comment about keyboard snob). This already happened with the Mac mini. Companies like Plasticsmith rolled out multiple products to fit your Mac mini needs.

In the end, if Apple can get you excited about your computer over $20 worth of keyboard parts, that's great for them. If they can't, then so what. You can pick from hundreds of keyboards out there.

Conquer Cord Clutter

My latest simplification involves taming cords on the kitchen counter. I saw the Socket Pocket and had to have one. I don't know why the comments on sites like lifehacker seemed to hate it so much. Are cords on the counter that big of a deal? Yes, when cats play with them. When kids yank on them. When you can't set groceries down because there is a cord pile in the way. These are all problems I don't want to have. The Socket Pocket is simple, not too ugly, and it gets the job done.



That's my wife's cell phone, and now it lives nice and tidy on the wall. The second one (they come in packs of two) is in the garage holding my bicycle light so I always know where to find it and it is charged and ready to blaze the night.

There are a few things I would change about the Socket Pocket. First, I'd change the construction and design and have it come in one piece. Currently in ships in 3 pieces -- the plate, the pocket, and the bottom of the pocket. The pocket is actually flat and you have to bend it to shape and slide it into slots on the plate. It works, but it is flimsy. Mold the pocket and plate in one piece. Having the bottom a seperate snap-in still makes sense the way the fingers in the bottom can flip up and snap back down. Second, give us something other than white plastic. I think stainless steel would be nice. Plenty of folks have stainless steel appliances these days, so stainless would fit in the kitchen nicely and it wouldn't look bad in the garage either.

Subscribe and Save

You may or may not have noticed that Amazon added a subscription capability a few months back. It isn't available on all things (who needs a monthly Britney Spears delivery?), but most consumables can be subscribed to. Things like cleaner, diapers, and cereal are all available.

It's a good deal too. You save 15% off the price by subscribing. The odd thing is, you can cancel at any time, so it seems like you could subscribe to a single shipment just to get 15% off. Maybe someone can find the small print that says you can't do that. Anyway, here's a nice example of the money you can save with Amazon subscriptions. It's really nice that super saver shipping continues to apply.

5 of The Now

It's not hard to tell I'm in a techy, clicky, phase at the moment.

• Broker/Dealer - Satin Jacket Techy, minimal, and warm


• Booka Shade - In White Rooms (Neo Remix) Booka Shade makes another appearance on the 5otn. The synth line really gets me in this one. It teases you with its simplicity and power.


• Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler Another track off Dubfire's Global Underground 31. Blipy and funky.


• Garbage - Cherry Lips (Howie B Remix) This is an old track but I didn't get a chance to hear it until I picked up the Howie B FABRICLIVE. Sorry, I can't find a link to hear this one.


• One+One - Rover James Zabiela and Nic Fanciulli make up One+One and it's a great team. The first time I heard this track playing, when it gets popping, I actually said out loud "Goddamn that's yummy".

Replacing Dew

I've written about drinking Mountain Dew on 2 previous occasions. I've tried reducing my intake, but I always bounce back up. This time I've gone cold turkey. I'm proud to say that neither Dew nor any other "soda" has touched my lips in 42 days. I don't think I've gone that long since I was 5.

I'm drinking more water, but I still like something with some taste, so I've been trying various drinks to replace where I'd normally drink pop. I've tried more diet varieties, but I really can't stand fake sugar. The problem with stuff that isn't pop is that it is expensive. Dew is pennies compared to drinking Naked Juice, Sobe, and Izze.

My ultimate goal is to find a good tasting, reasonably priced, lower calorie drink. Here's a chart I made of some of the drinks I've been drinking recently.



Maybe it is no surprise to you, but drinking Tropicana Lemonade is like drinking Pepsi. The healthy Green Tea has lots of calories. As for the rest, factor in price, and surprisingly, Gatorade comes out the winner. Low in calories. Tastes good. Cheaper than most drinks that aren't pop.

As a final motivator to stay off Dew, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. If you drink 48 ounces of dew a day, that's 660 calories. If you simply switch to Gatorade, you save 360 calories a day and will lose a pound every 10 days with no other changes to your diet. That's 36 pounds in a year!

What are your favorite drinks that are low in calories (but not zero calories)?

StarLytes of Wonder

If we're showing off our old toys, then I'd like to submit this mid-80s gem extracted from my parent's basement.

I have two working LazerTag guns plus sensors. That's all my brother and I ever had. They had cool stuff like rifles and vests, but they were always too expensive for us. That didn't matter though. We spent countless hours running around the neighborhood shooting each other and even more hours setting up target practice and diving around the living room. I can't help but think someone would call 911 on us these days. Juveniles with guns would be the report.

I guess LazerTag is still around, but it ain't the same, ya know? Check out some great history at this LazerTag fan site.

Stupid Shopping on the Web

While trying to buy some items at Home Depot, I came across this not-so-helpful message.



Ok, the software is smart enough to know that item isn't available and to tell me, but isn't smart enough to not add it to my cart in the first place? How about disabling the "add to cart" for items that aren't available. I guess there could have been a chance that the item became unavailable in the time it took to load the page and for me to add it, but I doubt it.

Juice for Belvedere

Last October, I posted about combining a desktop valet and a charger. Apparently others had the same idea. A few months ago I saw a charging valet in the SkyMall catalog. Brookstone was the vendor.

You can see some more charging valets at Wedding Bee. They suggest using them as groomsman gifts. Seems like a pretty good idea to me. My best men got stormproof lighters :)

KangaRooM has a very reasonably priced charging valet as well.


I still think it would be fun to build your own. A drill and a power bar is about all you need.

Symbols for the Colorblind

It's been a year since my last colorblind post, so I thought I'd bring up the topic again. This one is even iPhone related, because I know you can't possibly be sick of hearing about the iPhone. Definitely not.

If you are making web pages, please don't use tiny blips of color to convey meaning. Here is the example of what not to do.


It doesn't take much to fix this problem. Simply add some subtle symbols to the icons to allow those with poor color vision to discern the difference.

iPhone - Successful Before Shipping

Apple's iPhone ships this week. It may make Apple a lot of money, it may not, that's not the topic here. The great thing about the iPhone is that it has been successful in pushing the tech industry without ever selling a single one.

Is everything new on the iPhone? Of course not. Only the uninformed and blinded fans don't realize that the iPhone contains a lot of technology already in use in many other phones. However, the iPhone is doing some things different, and here are a few of the items that I think will benefit the industry.

• No scrollbars - Real estate on mobile devices is very limited. Apple is bolding ditching the desktop and mouse UI and relying on finger flicks for scrolling. I don't know about you, but hitting arrows the size of the text on a keyboard key, next to a screen bezel is not an easy task. Both Windows Mobile and Palm OS use scrollbars. It will be interesting to see how OS X without scrollbars works.



• Alphabet scrollers - This is new to me at least. The alphabet down the side of the screen allows more precise scrolling while still saving scroll bar space.



• Contact based dialing - The iPhone brings focus to calling people based on their contact info primarily and their phone number as a last resort. Yes, please.



• Simple call management - Putting people on hold, swapping calls, merging for a conference call. These are all a button push away. My home phone and desk phone are all capable of these, but I never use them because I can't remember the steps. Something about pressing flash for 1 second, then hanging up, and something. Who's on the other line? I have no idea, I don't have that information available to me. The iPhone looks amazing in this regard.



• Google maps - Soon all phones will have mapping. Again, this isn't new. Garmin used to make handhelds that included turn by turn directions. Plentry of other phones do as well, but the tight integration is where Apple is pushing the industry. Auto-dialing from map searches. Contact management of businesses. These are the next steps and Apple has them today.



• .com button. This is a first to me. The keyboard on the Safari browser has a .com button. That's brilliant. It would be even better if it used some Google smarts to figure out when the .com needs to be .org or .edu. Tapping in .com is a pain. This makes it less painful. Have you ever seen a .com button on a keyboard before?



• Visual voicemail - I want this at work. I want this at home. This has been needed for years. This will be on all phones within a couple of years if Apple hasn't patented it tight.



• Smarter button locks - * clear to unlock? No thanks. A simple slide of the finger makes sense. I hate the Sony Ericsson phone at work that lectures me everytime I take too many key presses to unlock it. "Next time hit * 1 to unlock". How about next time, you engineer a solution that doesn't require that you remind me how to use it everytime I do.



• Full web browser, multi-touch to the masses, continued music/phone integration based on lessons learned with the ROKR.



• Finally, the price point. We still don't have all of the pricing details, but the iPhone will recalibrate phone pricing. Apple is very successful with setting price points and holding them pretty well. The iPhone's price point clears alot of room for other phone manufacturers to begin making money on phones again. I know many people want free phones, but you get what you pay for. Personally, I'll pay for quality, ease of use, tight integration, and good design. It would be great if the iPhone would slow the yearly churn on cell phones. We have enough old electronics in our landfills.

iTunes Exclusive (except for Best Buy)

While checking the Best Buy ad today, I came across an interesting development. Drive, a previously iTunes exclusive mix by the Crystal Method will now be available on CD, selling exclusively at Best Buy.

From what I've seen, this is the first iTunes exclusive that is no longer exclusive. If you know of others, please drop a note in the comments.


This is further solidifying iTunes as a music store and even content producer. You really don't need further proof than the fact that iTunes is now the #3 music retailer in the US. It seemed only yesterday that people were still saying no one wants to buy music online. I can't say I buy more music from iTunes than elsewhere, but I know that I don't buy from Wal-Mart or Target. The long tail is selling and the brick and mortars are missing out.

As an aside, exclusive is losing meaning. Is it still exclusive if iTunes is the only one selling the digital version and Best Buy is the one selling the CD version? Is it right to call something exclusive if you know it won't be in a short time? Expect this topic to come up alot with the iPhone which is exclusive to AT&T for 2 months to 5 years depending on who you believe.

Save a pixel, plant a Safari

Safari for Windows is out. Overall, I like it. I don't know if it will overthrow Firefox as my default browser, but I'm giving it some time.


One of the first things I noticed was how tight the top of the browser is. Even with the menu bar that is normally on the top of the screen in OS X, Safari still takes up less space than Firefox and IE. The best part is that it does this without losing much usability. Between Safari and Firefox, menus are 1 pixel shorter. Buttons are 11 pixels shorter, so that's where the savings come from. Will I have more misses when I reach for the button bar? We'll see.

WWDC Predictions

Monday's the day. Here's my predictions.

* It's a developer conference. You need to feed the developers. Widget support for Apple TV will be announced.
* 3rd party development for the iPhone will be announced. This will include widget support and a qualification program to get your app Made for iPhone.
* The widgets for the Apple TV and iPhone will be made with Dashcode. You'll be able to deploy your widget across most of the Apple product line. iPods will be excluded, at least until they release the iPhoneish iPod.
* .Mac will get an overhaul. Disk space will be greatly increased. I'd like to believe the Google apps tie-ins, but we'll have to see.
* There will NOT be a tablet Mac. The world still isn't ready for a tablet, no mater how hard Microsoft is trying to build that market. The recent flood of multi-touch gadgets will make the tablet computer far more palatable.
* There won't be much iPhone talk. It will get its own event.
* There will be backlash on Leopard features. It won't have everything everyone is expecting and they'll wonder why they are waiting until October to get it.

Overall, I'm not expecting any major wows. However, the iPhone has been a fantastic smoke screen (people won't stop talking about it) and Apple could be holding some surprises, but I really think the iPhone was an all hands on deck kind of product.

Waaaa, I wanna infringe, waaaaaa

So I bought a new couch. The guy in the factory wrote my name on the cross support underneath the seat. I found this out when I turned it over, cut it open, and started poking around with a flashlight. How dare they put my name in this couch. What if I want to throw this couch through someone's window? It will have my identifying information all over it.

In other news, iTunes Plus songs, that are DRM free, have your account name and email embedded in them. You can't resell them, so you can't claim you care for that reason. You have to digitally dig to find your name, so it isn't like it is popping up all over iTunes. Can anyone come up with a decent reason why this is bad? Are people ever satisfied? I guess we'll have to see what other demons are hiding in there.

Teramac Dreams

WWDC is fast approaching, and now that the new MacBook Pros have been released, I fully expect new iMac hardware to be shown next week. This makes me happy because I've been wanting an iMac for a long time now. I was hoping for a release in January, but that didn't happen. Now, with the delay of Leopard, I still might not buy new hardware until it is released, but still, let's see the new iMac!

So what do I want to see? Honestly, not much. My biggest wish is hard drive capacity. Perhaps I'm an odd dude, but I want prosumer like specs, but I don't want a low end Mac Pro. I want an iMac with a TB of disk space. They are real close now. You can get 750GB as a BTO. The biggest restriction is the iMac's single hard drive.

To get past that single hard drive limitation, let's go big. Let's go 30" big. The iMac currently tops out at 24" and that's the one I've had my eye on. However, if they made a 30" version and filled it will giant hard drives, I might be tempted. I don't want external drives. They are ugly. They take up space. They require more wires and more power supplies. No thanks. I don't want a server in my closet. They're usually loud (even in a closet), burn electricity, and I don't have any outlets in my closets so you have the ugly wires again.

Since we're dreaming, I'll get real crazy and ask for 3 hard drives in my iMac. 2 of them will be high performance drives in a RAID 1 configuration for performance and data reliability. This will hold the OS, applications, and documents. The 3rd will just be that big lump that stores all of my media (music, movies, pictures). If we're shooting for that TB, we can do dual 250 gigers teamed with the single 750 drive. As long as you have room to cram those drives in, this is all quite doable.

So what else do I want? LED backlighting seems to be all the rage. I'm not real picky on video cards. Case redesign? Maybe a tweak or two. I really think the iMac is close to perfection in the case design. Multi-touch display. No thanks. I don't think the world is ready for that on a screen just yet. As a standalone pad, yes, I want one, but think of how people sit in front of the computer screens. The screens aren't usually within comfortable reach. You'd have to design new office chairs and desks to easily do multi-touch on your display. Either that or mount it high on a wall and stand-up.

The countdown continues.

5 of The Now

Man, I managed to pick a bunch of tracks that are hard for you all to hear. I apologize that I don't have links for some of these.

• Boards of Canada - Peacock Tail
  Perfect for an early evening cocktail sitting on the deck watching the sun set.


• Das Efx - Set it Off
  Das Efx made a splash back in '92 with Dead Serious. They've continued to make good music but have stayed mostly under the radar. "Set it Off" rocks a club nice.


• UNKLE - Lonely Soul
  "I believe there's a time and a place, to let you mind drift and get out of this place." That's the first lyric of the song and I think it says it all. Dj Shadow's work on this track is mind blowing.


• Matrix & Futurebound - Coast to Coast
  Drum & Bass, but not like you'd expect. Truly original. It's the one named MATRIXFUTUREBOUNDCO on the myspace page.


• Riton - Anger Man (Riton Re-Rub)
  This will either sound like complete noise to you or it will crawl in your head and grind your thoughts into powder which will be blended with dance juice and immediately absorbed by your system. Try and sit still!

The Google Gods Have Smiled On Me

Despite the silly name, I use iGoogle as my homepage. It was always annoyed me that it was so difficult to get to the other Google services from iGoogle. I had to keep gmail, calendar, and reader widgets around just for the easy link to the other services.

Google has finally fixed this. They now have a nice little link bar at the top of Google, just like you find in their other services. Thank you Google. You have made my day a little brighter.

Futura Coincidence

I went to wash my truck a few weeks ago and was floored to see what I thought was graffiti from one of my favorite artists, Futura 2000. Right there on the wall was the stylized letters spelling Futura.

In a few moments, I realized that it was not graffiti, but actually the name of the carwash system. I still thought the font looked very similar and took a picture for comparison. The more I look at this, the more it is just a weird coincidence. They aren't really all that similar, but you can see where I might have thought they were at first. The white box with black text is Futura 2000's signature. The colorful sign is from the carwash.

Go Where the Wind Is

While feeling a stiff breeze this past week, this image popped into my head. What if there were massive windmills that could walk to where the wind is? They'd carry huge batteries that could hold the charge until they were back near transmission lines. The energy to walk could come from the wind and sun.

Yes, this is probably pure fantasy, but I spent a few minutes combining an ATAT with a windmill. It's a fun picture.



Special thanks to the site where I took the original ATAT picture from.

Perils of a Bootcamper

Today, just a tale of woe for those of us that spend time on both sides of the OS fence.

As you know, Watch Now from Netflix requires Windows and IE. So, I'm on the MacBook, booted into XP and half way through a film. A scene of quiet dialog came on and I reach to turn up the volume.



F5. That's an evil key. My MacBook brain thinks volume up. My web browser thinks refresh. Click click. Ohh, look, my movie is gone. It's negotiating to transfer the movie again. Fantastic.

Stupid F5 key. Stupid Watch Now player. Stupid keyboard overlay that doesn't match the actions. Grrrrrr.

Sea of Links

I'm loving Google's My Maps, but it is missing something. As the folks at work keep saying, you need to be able to save a link to maps that other people send you, and I agree. Google gives you links to recently viewed maps, but as far as I can tell, you can't save them.



Until Google gives us that feature, try this hack. Pick a random spot in the world. That will be your link drop. Then, just drop a placemarker for each map you want to save. Then in the description, set it to HTML mode and edit in your link to that map. You really don't need the marker on the map, but this will keep those map links within Google maps at least.

Intel Inside...the TV

Mark Cuban has a post up at Blog Maverick discussing HDTVs as PCs. As to computers in the TV, I agree 100%. It just has to happen. Computers are now amazingly cheap and TVs are getting amazingly complex, or at least the stuff they need to display is getting amazingly complex.

Mark did say some things that had me shaking my head though.

Remember when you would buy a new PC every couple years to keep up and you would buy a new TV every decade ? Well thats about to reverse itself. You no longer feel the need to get the latest and greatest desktop PC, but you are about to get in the habit of upgrading your TV every couple years as new and original features and applications are developed for it.

Yes, I remember the computer treadmill. A new one every 2 or 3 years, just to be able to run what was current. There's no way I'm going to do that with TVs, especially TVs that now cost in the thousands, not the hundreds of dollars.

In 3 years the mainstream TV will be 70" and cost less than $1500. In 5 years, it could be 100" for $2500 dollars . Yes, you will make room for it. You will redesign the family room or your bedroom to make room.

I'm guessing Mark's house is a little bigger than mine. There's no way I can fit a 100" tv in either my family room or my bedroom. It might fit downstairs in what can be a home theater room, but even then, 100" is gigantic and you need to sit a long way away from that screen. People aren't going to build bigger houses to hold their bigger TVs. At least, not the masses.

So back to the computer in the TV. Absolutely, I want this. If you've seen an Apple TV, your first thought is Why can't they just cram that in the back of the LCD? I wonder if the current Apple TV is the first in a family of products. It doesn't take much imagination to picture a 30" Apple display with an Apple TV built in.

Apple isn't the only company that can make this happen, but they appear to be one of the few that care. The on screen menus of many of todays DVD players, receivers, and HD tuners look like they were designed by engineers. They navigate like they were designed by engineers. They frustrate the crap out of their users. In case I'm being too subtle, most engineers can't design UIs. The ones that can are usually designers.

Part of the reason they suck so bad is that they're written in low level languages running on very basic display hardware. It takes a lot of effort to make stuff look good with those resources. Contrast that with the Apple TV. It's a full-blown computer running a full-blown OS that can make use of full-blown development tools and techniques. The Apple TV costs $300, but that's not that much more to pay on top of a TV that already costs $3000. I say build it in. You might think this leads to the upgrade path that Mark suggests. I'd like to think the opposite. Build in some general purpose hardware and let folks at it. Look at all of the new functionality that has been built on the Apple TV. Look at the tremendous work done to add functionality to routers with the DD-WRT project. If you open it up (intentionally or not), they will build for it.

Let me run widgets on my TV. Let me cut out the weather warnings with stylesheets for TV. Let me build a channel guide that doesn't suck.

It seems to me that this is what Mark Cuban would want, and I think he does. He wants people to continue to sit in front of their TVs and watch HDNet. To keep them there with compelling user experiences. He even points out some of the ways that features are being added to TVs. However, pay attention to the subscription fees for services like caller-id on your TV though. I don't want a plan for my TV!

So, to sum it up, TV manufacturers need to build up the development capabilities of their TVs. Focus on the experience. Focus on the interface. Do these things and you'll get my dollars.

Photo Hunt CR 2

A new Photo Hunt is starting and I've given it its own site. It officially starts on Monday, but the first locations are up, so come join the fun.

iPod Wireless Sync - Still Hoping

The rumors of a wireless iPod are starting up again. It's been over 2 years since I first called for a wireless iPod on this blog. So if it hasn't happened by now, why would it?

• Apple TV trickle down - The work of figuring out wireless syncing is already done. Apple did that work for the Apple TV and it works well. They've already dealt with the errors and the intervals. Now, this is over 802.11 flavors, not Bluetooth, but at this point, wireless is wireless. I'll live with Wi-Fi, but I still want Bluetooth.


• Cost - It's years later. The Bluetooth radios are dirt cheap now, especially in iPod quantities.


• Market has been prepped - The Zune has plowed that road. The wireless hasn't proved to be a killer app, but people are aware that it is in there. Apple loves to come late to the party and do it right. Here's an opportunity.


• iPhone trickle down - We still don't have any good info on whether the iPhone can sync wirelessly, but Apple engineers certainly learned plenty of mechanical and electrical lessons with the radios they put in the iPhone.


• Draw Upgrades - If you have a 5G iPod, what would make you upgrade? A bigger hard drive? Doubtful. They're getting pretty big. Until they get a bigger screen, people aren't rushing to toss gigs and gigs of movies on them. Size isn't an issue. If you wanted something smaller, you'd get a nano. Battery life might be nice, but would you buy a new one for that? Wireless done right could be a feature to upgrade for.

Now, why wouldn't it happen?

• Cost - Adding even $5 on for a Bluetooth radio is quite a bit, not only in parts, but development time and support costs.


• Product differentiation - If you can sync wirelessly with the iPhone, Apple might want to keep that feature high end to drive sales of the iPhone.


• Battery life - If you believe that the iPhone only gets 40 minutes of battery life then you probably think the iPod would only get 30 :) In any case, radios do burn juice. You don't get to use them for free.

Chapters and the iTunes Store

When the iTunes store first opened, you could buy continous mix CDs from DJs, but you only got the individual tracks. This sucked because of the lack of gapless support in both iTunes and the iPod. They've since added gapless support, or so they say. I still thinks it sucks because it only works about 20% of the time for me. The gap is gone, sure, but usually they cut the tinyest bit of the music too. You probably won't notice it in a live show, or perhaps even a mixed album, but you hear it in DJ mixes, especially if you have a DJ brain and can't turn off the counting in your head.

So gapless playback is poor, but the iTunes store has made this better by giving you a free continous mix, all in one track, along with the individual ones. Electric Calm 3 is one example of this. The problem with these all-in-one files is that you can't jump between the tracks like you are able to on a CD. We know that Apple has a tool to add chapter markers to files. Is it that they don't work on protected files? I decided to find out.

I made a copy of my purchased Electric Calm 3 file. I then whipped up a quick XML file with some chapter points to apply to the copied file. ChapterTool was called, and after a long delay, ChapterTool tells me status: ok. Cool, time to try it.



Sure enough, it plays just fine and the chapter marks are fully functional. This really makes me wonder why they don't do this from the start. It would make the file far more useful. Well, I guess I have the power to do it myself now. Time to write some code to auto-generate the necessary XML file.

Apple TV Linkage

It's all coming fast and furious now. Here's some links.

Fudbuster - So everyone is linking the AP technology review and blowing things out of proportion with the Barely Watchable comment. It's true, there is a lot of bad content on the iTunes store, but you can't pin that on the Apple TV. The output from it can look stunning. For proof, fire up one the HD video podcasts like the one from DiveFilm.

Features - Engadget has a nice walk-thru on how to add codecs for DivX and Xvid. I really don't care, but plenty of people seem to.

Fudbuster - Roughly Drafted has some fantastic facts on the Apple TV myths, including 5.1 audio and comparisons to Xbox. You might recognize some of the arguments.

Features - Make your Apple TV run Perl scripts. There's a hack I can get behind. Now where did I put my camel book?

Features - Make your own Apple TV scrensaver.

It's pretty obvious that the Apple TV is pretty wide open at this point. You can add just about anything to it and that's only going to get easier. Now if someone would figure out how to get widgets on it so I can stop with my cheesy image hacks. Maybe Perl is the key.

My Maps Impresses

Man, I love Google. They just keep giving us the good stuff. The latest is My Maps which lets you draw, annotate, link, and add multimedia to your Google Maps. The tools are simple but very powerful. I love this idea. I loved it when all of these folks built their own implementations use the Google Maps API. Unfortunately, I never loved it enough to muck around with those setups. Now, I don't have to. Google has made it dead easy.



To try it out, I made a map of the locations from my Photo Hunt that ran on this blog back in 2005. It was very easy and a lot of fun. You just click the map to drop a locator and then type your title and text. If you want to add links and photos, just switch to HTML mode and edit away. I found that the rendering will respect img attributes like align and height. You can use height to limit the rendering size of an image that might be a little large for the locator description. The only drawback is that you need your photos to already be online. They don't (yet) have an image upload feature like Blogger does.

These maps are really a lot of fun to make and they will be great for your friends and family to view too. I've written enough about geotagging in the past for you to know I'll be making maps of my vacations :)

Next up, I plan to map some of the cycling routes around town that I enjoy. My Maps is great! Thank you Google.

Podcasted Television - Is Viacom Learning?

So we all know that Viacom has sued Google for a billion dollars. They don't like their content up on YouTube, and I don't blame them.

Viacom isn't all evil. Comedy central has some video podcasts that I enjoy, and just this week I subscribed to The Best Week Ever podcast from Vh1. My wife and I enjoyed the show when we had cable. We were disappointed to see that the podcast was outtakes, and other random junk. That is until a couple of days ago when the full weekly episode showed up!

Now we're getting somewhere. I don't get why you can't already subscribe to television shows (ignoring Joost until they let me into the beta). I know that networks like to sell season DVDs and show by show on the iTunes store, but at the same time, all of the major networks, and many cable networks, are putting up their content for free streaming on the net. They include commericals and I'm fine with that.

Unfortunately, watching TV on your computer isn't the greatest experience. Hooking you computer to your TV makes it better, but you still have to do crap like this with cables hanging everywhere. Ugg.



So now I have the Apple TV. 1 wire hooks it to my TV. It is small, sleek, and ready to rock. Now I just need the networks to get over the mental hurdle that seperates streaming television vs. podcasted television. They can still include the ads. They can even limit the resolution and bit rate to less than DVD quality if they want. Rather than fight their viewers, they should just embrace them. Look at the silly minute shifting they do to keep your DVR from recording their show (or other network's shows). You don't need a DVR if you can get the content directly from the broadcasters!

5 of The Now

• Lemongrass - Aloha Perhaps this would make a good ring tone on the iPhone :)


• Bloc Party - On The whole album is good. I could have listed 4 or 5 here.


• Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches You probably remember Robyn from her '97 album Robyn is here. I lost track of her since then. I really didn't even know she was still making music. Well, she was, and some of it is "new" on the iTunes store now. This track has a Gwen Stefani, Fergie feel to it, but since she originally released it in 2005, you really can't say she's jumping on the bandwagon. If you are wondering about the track title, I believe it is because she's signed to Konichiwa records. At first I was digging the Trentemoller remix, but the original is now my favorite. The video is quite the experience.


• RJD2 - The Third Hand I can't pick a single track just yet. Right now, the whole album sounds pretty good.


• Shonky - Olympia Spacey, airy, watery, all in one. This one really builds and I love the "shake" sounds.