In Apprehension

Touching

So for about 11 days now I've been in love. I picked up an iPod Touch, and this thing is just fantastic. In fact I'm simply lying in bed right now, having just woken up with an ambulance going by and figured I'd knock off an entry for the he'll of it. The keyboard takes a little getting used to, but it's pretty intuitive (and Apple has some shortcuts that are nice). Sadly, no camera like the iPhone but that's liveable.

Bookmarked

Just something for me to fiddle with later: How to make Windows look like a real computer.

Shiny!

There's a wonderful photoset up at Flickr, comparing the Apple Newton to the new iPhone.  The wonderful thing is that not only do you get to see the size and design comparisons, but the pictures are also extremely well composed and lit.  Extreme kudos to Flickr user  philcarrizzi, whose pictures these are.  (I love the monolith feel of the iPhone packaging, for that matter.)  Now I really want an iPhone, since I had a Newton back and the day and I now have a size comparison in my head.

(Link courtesy of The Unnoficial Apple Weblog, who found this before me.)

Closing Tabs

• Unintended consequences of the racist border fence on the US-Mexico border. Antonio N. Zavaleta, a vice president and professor of anthropology at the University of Texas branch in Brownsville, saw a slight problem in the route of a border fence that federal officials displayed at a community meeting earlier this month. “Part of our university,” Dr. Zavaleta said, “would be on the Mexican side of the fence.” What about traffic between classes, he wondered. “Would the students need to show a passport?”
• Growing up on Nancy Drew, an interesting column on the effects Nancy Draw had on women over the past 70 years.  Me, I was more into the Hardy Boys just because they had a speedboat named Sleuth.
• Michael "Punchy" Barrett has been traded to the Padres.  The Cubs received some magic beans.  Micahel Downey has an interesting commentary in the Chicago Tribune.  (Interesting to find in a quick Wikipedia search that there was a Fenian named Michael Barrett who was hung in 1868 for his part in the Clerkenwell bombing of innocent civilians in London.)
• Stupid headline of the day: Will Fatherhood Affect Tiger's On-Course Performance?  Hell, I don't know; let's ask Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson, Nancy Lopez, Tom Watson and a host of other great golfers who had kids during their careers whether their performances were affected. (The conversation is much less goofy; I'm just ripping on the headline itself.)
• Oooooh, new iPhone porn.  Sadly, still no picture of the Bluetooth headseat.
• We've been debating the revision of AFI's list of the top 100 movies over at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, and seeing which ones from the eligible list we'd add and which ones from the current list we'd drop.  For instance, my list of adds:

LA CONFIDENTIAL
BOOGIE NIGHTS
THREE KINGS
THE SIXTH SENSE (what kind of horror movie makes you cry at the end?)
THE INSIDER
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
MEMENTO
FINDING NEMO
LOST IN TRANSLATION
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CRASH
HOTEL RWANDA

But where's "Adaptation?"

And since I didn't do the bump last time, you drop:

4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) (I'm boggled this is on the original list for anything besides technical reasons; it's an awful piece of sappy historical revisionism)
7. THE GRADUATE (1967) (Wow, did this movie date badly.)
33. HIGH NOON (1952) (Same thing.)
41. WEST SIDE STORY (1961) (Barely cracks the list of bets 50 musicals much less movies in general.)
62. TOOTSIE (1982) (I don't understand the appeal of this weirdly un-funny movie.)
71. FORREST GUMP (1994) (I like it, but let's get serious.)
75. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) (No. One of the worst Kevin Costner movies, which is really saying something.)
99. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967) (Another movie that has sadly dated badly, since the acting is sublime.)

Any disagreements with my lists?

Five Years of Aqua Goodness

Yep, today marks the 5th anniversary of the release of OS X 10.0.  Can you believe it's been that long since Apple once again upped the ante on everyone else?  ArsTechnica has a great look back at the release and what it meant for Apple, a company that even with the release of the original iMac was still somewhat sitting in the duldroms and not considered that leader it had been once and is again.

Also, take a look at these great screenshots of the OS X Public Beta.  I'd completely forgotten that the Apple menu was in the center of the toolbar.

Thank you, Penny Arcade

How much longer until I can get one of my own?

Dating With Fruit

This is definitely my winner for the month for unintended uses of new technology:

The iPod is turning into a dating device, clearly. Already, PodDater.com allows people to download videos of other singles onto their video iPods. When I checked the site a couple of days ago, it had more than 600 profiles up. Not bad for a brand-new dating site. There's also single.podcom.org, allowing people to download and listen to other singles' audio file messages.

Happy Labor day

In honor of Not Working For The Man Day (thanks, Tom), an interesting article on the one good thing about Microsoft (okay, besides the wonderful XBox): the Macintosh Business Unit.

The autonomy of this relatively small division allows Microsoft programmers to cut loose and design the best software they can imagine without having to conform to the restraints of the mammoth parent company.

"It shows what Office could really be if it weren't for the 'strategy tax' — that every software product has to play into the overall Windows strategy," says Greg DeMichillie, lead analyst with independent researcher Directions on Microsoft. "Most of the new features of Office 2003 were about connecting to Windows servers, not making Word a better word processing program."

Apple Thinks About The Children

I don't have any children, but I thought this feature of iChat AV, Apple's instant messaging system, was particularly noteworthy.

On iChat at home, enforce your “no talking to strangers” rule with built-in controls that allow you to decide who your children can chat with online. Approve the buddies you trust and iChat blocks all attempts to send and receive IMs with anyone else. iChat also automatically hides or displays online status so that only buddies approved by you will be able to see if your kids are online.

Kudos to Apple for coming up with a system that works and requires parents to be responsible.

Further proof that some people are much, much more clever than I am; the dude who reverse-engineered the iPod firmware - as audio.

Cooooooooool.