| Monday, 20 December 2004, 10:23 pm Tags: Camera Phone |
| Monday, 20 December 2004, 10:08 pm Tags: Camera Phone |
Editing the remaining missing podcasts. They’ll be up soon.
| Monday, 20 December 2004, 10:09 am Tags: Alerts |
Tune in KFI all this week at 8:20a as I talk gadgets for the holidays with Bill Handel.
Monday: Cell phones
Tuesday: Digital Cameras
Wednesday: MP3 players
Thursday: Camcorders
Friday: Accessories (USB drives, card readers, webcams, etc.)
If you’re in Southern California listen to 640 AM, elsewhere listen on the net. Or subscribe to the podcast for each day’s episode after it airs.
| Saturday, 18 December 2004, 7:17 pm Tags: Alerts |
I know the blog is going up and down right now. I’m trying to figure out why. I can get into the Admin area every time so it’s not the server. Thanks for your patience.
UPDATE: OK I think I’ve quashed the bug. It was in the Index template – I have been changing the moblog over to a gallery and it caused a line in my template to hang. All should be well now. Sorry about that.
| Saturday, 18 December 2004, 3:21 pm Tags: Alerts |
My segment with John Donabie on CFRB, Toronto just aired. If you missed it live you can listen to the MP3 or subscribe to the podcast to have it, and all the TLR audio, delivered automatically to your MP3 player. I often don’t announce new additions to TLR here, so subscribing is the only way to guarantee delivery of new TLR content.
Incidentally, thanks to a suggestion from a listener, I’m going to make the Genre tag read “podcast” in all new podcasts to aid in sorting, smart playlists, etc. This seems to be the emerging standard. I apologize for the inconsistency in the tagging and filenames – I’m still trying to work out the best way to do it. Feedback is very welcome.
Currently the filename begins with TLR for the TLR feed and KFI for the radio feed followed by the feed date in YYYYMMDD format. In some cases in the TLR feeds I am putting other information in the title, e.g. TLRWoz1.mp3. Is this confusing? Helpful? Should it always just be TLR and date and let the MP3 tags do the rest? I am thinking of making it consistently just the date unless there are multiple feeds for that day, then it will be YYYYMMDD-#.
The tag format is roughly:
Artist: always Leo Laporte
Album: the feed name (TLR or KFI) plus the month and year, e.g. TLR December 2004. Organizing by month seems the best way to do this.
Year: actually the full date in YYYY-MM-DD format. Is this confusing? Does it break your software?
Genre: was various, but will always be Podcast from now on
Track: In the KFI aircheck feeds this will reflect the hour number, 1, 2, or 3. In the TLR feed it will be left blank from now on unless there’s a multipart feed as in the Woz interview.
Title: This is the most variable, and is usually just whatever I think of on that day. On the KFI airchecks it’s pretty consistent: KFI Tech Guy, Date – Hour #. But if there’s something special on that day I may add that to the title. On the TLR feed it’s less consistent. The title will usually reflect whether it’s an interview I did – Radio call letters, Host, Interview and date – or a news feed or whatever. I haven’t come up with a consistent scheme for this. Does it matter to you?
I apologize if the inconsistency is making it difficult for you to organize the podcasts. Ideally you shouldn’t have to mess with tags and you should be able to set up a smart playlist to automatically organize these. Let me know what I can do to facilitate that. Thanks!
| Tuesday, 14 December 2004, 12:21 am Tags: News, Technology |
I‘m off to Vancouver BC for the Vicki Gabereau Show, but before I go… the news!
Those iPod ads are good, but home made iPod ads are better.
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published on this day in 1843. The clip-on tie was released in 1928. The Susan B Anthony dollar was released in 1978. Saddam Hussein was captured in his spider hole one year ago today.
- Oracle has successfully concluded its long-delayed takeover of PeopleSoft, heading off what could have been a bitter fight. Oracle shareholders will get $26.50/share – more than $10 more than Oracle’s first offer. PeopleSoft’s employees will get Larry Ellison as a boss. Doesn’t seem fair somehow.
- Microsoft has released desktop search software – wait doesn’t Windows do that already? – to compete with Google and Yahoo. The free software comes with the new MSN Toolbar Suite and works with Windows XP and 2000 only.
- Sony’s PSP shipped in Japan yesterday and promptly sold out. The first 200,000 units were gone in hours. Sony plans to ship three million by March. The portable gaming device sports console quality graphics and can also play movies and DVDs. It’s selling in Japan for 19,800 yen – about $188 US dollars. 21 games will be ready before the end of this year. Sony will offer the PSP in North America sometime next spring.
- Firefox use rose 34% in the US last month according to WebSideStory. Internet Explorer still has 90% market share web wide, although it’s now below 50% on this site.
- The US Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether P2P file sharing services like Kazaa and Grokster are liable for aiding copyright infringement. The court agreed to hear the music industry’s appeal of a Ninth Circuit court decision that Grokster and Streamcast were not liable because they didn’t exercise control over the music swapped using their service. This is gonna be the big one.
- A Manhattan housing court judge has been offered for sale on eBay, with free worldwide shipping included. The posting, from a disgruntled former litigant, was quickly pulled, but not before 21 bidders raised the judge’s price to $127.50.
- Robbers in Texas were scared off from a home invasion by sounds from Grand Theft Auto. “The police in the game were staying, ‘Stop, we have you surrounded. This is the police.’ The burglar, unknowingly, thought this was the actual police and panicked,” according to the Galveston DA.
Listen in Tuesday at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
Friday midday I’ll be on The Vicki Gabereau Show on CTV in Canada. (We only tape on Tuesday.)
| Sunday, 12 December 2004, 2:04 am Tags: Blogging |
My first MacMania cruise was a month ago, but with all the travel I’ve been doing lately it’s taken me a while to put together this little album of pictures. I didn’t take them all, by the way. A number of these were taken by Janet Hill, who works for Apple Education.
This is the ms Oosterdam our home for the week. It holds 2600 people: 1800 passengers and 800 crew. There were about 250 MacManiacs. We may have been small in number, but no matter where I went on board ship there seemed to be someone with a Powerbook or wearing a Mac t-shirt.
Talk about the perfect vacation. I hit the beach, enjoyed rum drinks in hollowed out pineapples, sat by the pool, and learned a ton about OS X, including the new Tiger and Applescript. I also met several dozen new best friends. All while gaining about seven pounds eating five meals a day. It doesn’t get any better than this. If you’re looking for a vacation that feeds the mind as well as the spirit (and the tummy), I highly recommend a Geek Cruise.
The kids really had a blast. Abby talked two of her best friends from school into coming and they hung out the whole time. I think Henry spent as much time wet as dry. The ship had several pools and he always seemed to be in one.
We also had tons of fun hanging out with NY Times columnist, David Pogue, and his family. Henry and Kelly Pogue were excellent seafarers.
David put me to shame with his incredible work ethic. If he wasn’t racing off to the cabin to work on the index to his latest Missing Manual, he was jotting down notes for his next presentation. And it showed. Each session was more entertaining and informative than the last. If you ever get a chance to see David speak, do it! I’m looking forward to seeing more of all the Pogues on MacMania 3.5.
Virgin Gorda was amazing. Jennifer Pogue chartered a boat there from Tortola and we spent the morning exploring the caves and beaches. Then we sailed to another island for lunch. This palm tree called to Henry.
Here I am flying the colors as we get off the charter. Consider this phase one of The Screen Savers world tour. Next summer, I’ll wear a Screen Savers cap in St. Petersburg.
All my wardrobe choices were carefully planned. Here I am in the complete Geek ensemble: Geek Cruise cap and Geek Pride t-shirt.
It was a kick to hang with Steve Wozniak. I’m glad to report that he’s just as fun and genuine as he seems (although I was disappointed at the lack of pranks on board). My shipboard interview with Steve aired on KFI on November 14, but it’s also available on the TLR podcast or you can download it in four parts here (Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3, Pt 4). I’m pleased to say that over 15,000 people have already listened to it.
I also enjoyed spending time with Applescript Product Manager, Sal Soghoian, who gave me a tour of the new Automator feature in OS X 10.4. This will be one of the most important new operating system technologies since the GUI and makes Tiger a must have upgrade. Essentially, Automator allows end-users to easily build workflows combining multiple applications and actions, then save the workflow to re-use or give to others. I expect a brisk trade in Automator workflows to spring up – there’s already at least one website dedicated to Automator, and more will certainly follow.
It’s so wonderful to be able to spend a week with like-minded people. I didn’t have to answer one question about removing spyware or fighting viruses. And for once, Mac owners were in the majority. One of the cruisers, Timber, even managed to sell Powerbooks to half the health spa staff.
I’m already planning my next Geek Cruise: a 10-day Baltic Blast to Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Stockholm June 30-July 10. I’ll be giving talks, Woz and David Pogue will be back, along with Chris Breen, and many repeat cruisers. I hope you’ll join us!
Photo credits: All pictures by Leo Laporte with a Nikon D-70 except Leo in Hat, Leo in TSS shirt, Henry by Palm Tree, and Woz by Janet Hill with a Canon Digital Rebel, and Leo sipping a Pina Colada by an unknown photographer with my Nikon D-70.
| Friday, 10 December 2004, 1:27 pm Tags: Camera Phone |
| Friday, 10 December 2004, 1:04 pm Tags: News, Technology |
According to my Lego grandfather clock, it’s news time…
The metric system was established in France on this day in 1799. The first Nobel prizes were awarded in 1901.
- IBM has, in fact, sold its PC division to Chinese manufacturer Lenovo for $1.4 billion and $500 million in debt. Lenovo is now the number three PC maker after Dell and HP. There’s a good history of the IBM PC at Internet News.
- Oh crap. Even though four other movie companies have decided on the HD-DVD format for their movies, Disney has opted for Sony’s Blu-Ray, ensuring that there will be a Beta/VHS style format war in the new Hi-Def DVDs. Disney said they’ll start putting out Blu-ray DVDs as soon as the players are available in 2006. That’s just Mickey Mouse.
- Yahoo is going to copy Google. Again. The Yahoo desktop search tool (based on the excellent X1) will be released in the New Year.
- The Inquirer says console games are in short supply this holiday season. The Nintendo DS is very hard to find, although Nintendo is planning to add an additional 400,000 units to the 1 million shipped to the US this year. Surprisingly, it’s very hard to find Sony’s two year old Playstation 2, too. Sony lauches the PSP in Japan next week, and that’s going to be a quick sell out no doubt – reports are that only 100,000 will be available at launch.
- Careful where you put your laptop. According to a study published Thursday in Human Reproduction, the habit of keeping your laptop in your lap can cause permanent sterility in men. It’s the heat generated by the laptop and the positioning of the thighs. How many times have I said that?
- A Gameboy is better at relaxing kids before surgery than tranquilizers, according to research from University Hospital in Newark. The study said “We find that the children are just so happy with the Game Boy that they actually do forget where they are.”
- Where was I? Oh yeah. Another reason to hate pop-ups: they’re security risks. According to Secunia, any browser that displays pop-ups, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari and Netscape, is vulnerable to an injection attack that could make a malicious site look like a secure site. Turn on pop-up blocking and breath a sigh of relief.
- The December Windows XP patches will hit Microsoft Windows Update December 14. There will be five fixes, none of them critical – how long has it been since we’ve been able to say that?
- As one of its last actions before recessing for the holidays, Congress has passed a law prohibiting cell phone voyeurism. Upskirters will face heavy fines and prison time if caught. The bill only applies to Federal jurisdictions. President Bush is expected to sign it.
- Federal regulators will meet next week to consider revising rules to allow cell phone usage aboard commercial airline flights. It’s not the safety issue that concerns me, it’s the annoyance factor.
- AOL has accidentally deleted an unknown (but apparently large) number of screen names in an attempt to purge unused names from its database. The company says it will take until Monday to restore the accounts.
- Vonage is going to follow Packet8 in adding video to its Voice over IP (VoIP) service next year.
Sun CEO Scott McNealy was fooled by a hoax photo that’s been circulating on the net for years. Claiming the photo came from a 1954 Popular Science article on the “home computer” he noted how far we’ve come in 50 years. More like how far Photoshop has come in 50 years.
Listen in Friday at 8:35a Pacific for my weekly commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles.
| Wednesday, 8 December 2004, 11:06 pm Tags: Blogging |
Click the picture to see the movie then wait…
(studiotour.mp4 – 454KB file – requires Quicktime)
Swag
