It is all about freedom to create and do what we want with Web and devices connected to it. It is simply not true that openness and ease of use exclude each other. Great reading.
On needing approval for what we create, and losing control over how it’s distributed.
Very interesting look at game design and interaction between virtual game and physical world. One of the most entertrainig presentations I have seen recently.
Snow Leopard goes on sale tomorrow. I’ve ordered my copy as soon as it was made available for pre-order. It is a special release for a number of reasons. Most remarkably, the release is introducing very few new features that are visible to users. It also takes less hard drive space then the previous version of Leopard operating system.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the first time in computer history that any company took time to optimize a core product, like operating system, for performance, size, stability, and not include more user features.
Apple decided this time to focus more on application developers then users. To make Leopard a better platform for application development. Is this new release only about developers then? No, end-users will benefit not only form more hard disk space, speed or improved stability of the new operating system. They will, in the end, also enjoy wide range of improved applications that are going to be built on top of new, underlying technologies not visible to them at first.
I wish more companies would follow and take time optimizing they products rather then rushing new features in.
Said that, there is no rush in upgrading your Mac. At least from end-user point of view. Snow Leopard has very few improvements in terms of user experience. You are just fine with good, old Leopard and all you favorite applications running on top of it. Wait till all the compatibility issues with your favorite applications are ironed out and upgrade then. Unless you want to have the latest and greatest OS running on your machine as soon as it is available and are willing to accept that some of your applications will not work right from the start.
Update: Read the ultimate Snow Leopard review by John Siracusa at Ars Technika.
Google has recently released calendar and address book sync for mobile and desktop devices using Microsoft Exchange protocol.
You need to follow a few simple steps on your iPhone to set it up. If you like me, use Google apps for your domain, you also need to enable mobile sync option. Go to ‘Manage this domain’ admin section, then ‘Service settings’ and ‘Mobile’. Under ‘Google Sync’ set ‘Enable Google sync’ check box.
Today at CES, Palm released their new phone called Pre.
Palm Pre
The exceptional thing about this device is that the UI engine implementation is based on Webkit rendering engine. This means that all applications, including once coming from Palm, are written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
It is very interesting to see a browser used as UI rendering engine for embedded device like a phone. I hope the performance will be good enough to provide snappy user experience.
It is surprising to see this approach taken by Palm and not by Google (Android phone applications are written in Java).
No word on price yet, expected to be shipped later this year.
UPDATE: See also the overview from Ars Technica.
Singer is an old famous brand of sewing machines. It’s also a name of cafe in Kazimierz, old part of Krakow city. The first one to open there in the early 1990s.
Me and my wife Rita have discovered it a few years back while wondering around the city and looking for a place to sit down and relax. Once we entered the cafe, we both knew it’s a unique place in its atmosphere. It was early afternoon and the place was almost empty. Jazz music was pouring out of the speakers. We were having a cup of coffee accompanied with cake, relaxing and looking around appreciating the interior decor. I took a few shots with my camera hoping to get them right in a dark interior of the cafe lighted up only by dimmed daily light and candles burning on a few tables.
Later on back home, we were watching slides from our trip and remembering the places we have visited. The Singer cafe and slides I took there turned out to be one of our favourites. All thanks to the charming atmosphere of old interior with famous brand vintage sewing machines recycled in coffee tables and candle holders.
Rita came up with the idea to make a theme that would reflect the place atmosphere we liked so much. And so, the Jazz Cafe theme was born.
The theme was originally created for Typo, Ruby on Rails blogging system and later on ported to Serendipity. Recently, I refreshed the theme for this website and released it for WordPress. If you want to give it a spin on your blog, you can download the latest version here: JazzCafe (zip file). And, if you use the theme I would love to here from you.
The movie rentals service and free, massive update to Apple TV were my two favorite announcements from the last MacWorld keynote. I’ve been a big fan of Apple TV and this update makes it even more attractive to me then before.
The update allows Apple TV owners to rent movies, browse photos from Flickr, subscribe to podcast, buy TV shows and music directly form iTunes online store. All without the use of a computer. The fact that I can now do all of this from the comfort of my couch using one slim device in usable and effortless way is something exceptional that only Apple could delivered so far.
What I really like about it now, is that I can rely on Flickr solely to store all my photos and slide show them on all my devices including TV. No need to store them locally on my Mac and synchronize them via iTunes. The same is true for audio and video podcasts which used to eat up quite some space on my hard drive. Not to mention pain it was to synchronize and share them between computers. I can save a lot of disk space and time right now by relying more on the cloud services and live stream my content directly from the web when needed. It would be great to be able to do the same with all my media content including my music library.
Apple TV direct integration with Web based services is something I would like to see happening for more consumer devices. Some people may argue about the lack of openness to other services and possibility to extend the functionality using some sort of SDK. At this point however, I’m willing to trade the lack of it for great user experience Apple made devices offer. Nothing beats Apple TV when it comes to ease of use and convenience.
The only thing I can be a bit disappointed about, is that the movie rentals service is not yet available in Europe. It will be started later on and I can only hope for this to happen sooner then later. Honestly, I was expecting that having in mind all the trouble Apple has had in EU with the iTunes store service. It is hard to blame Jobs for that. He simply needs more time to sort it out.