RouseWorld | Main -- June 2003 Archives

Rockville

No excuses, oh my brothers, I've just been real slack with the updates. Hopefully I can pound out a few this week for those out there in the dark who will still listen.

This weekend the lads and I were talking about the changes and evolution of the Internet and of music on the Internet in particular. How we all started up trying to pull crappy porno from irc rooms and ftp servers half the world away over 14.4 USRs and now we download movies weeks before they are released in the theaters (Did I say that? I'm just kidding).

Bug juice

Those of you who are fortunate (!?) enough to know me in "RL" may remember me posing an uncomfortable question a few months ago:

"Why don't they make alcohol from something other than plants?"

iCrazy

Well, Apple's iSync is driving me crazy. I've spent my whole evening trying to get it to behave in a rational fashion and now I need to sleep. I'll do a rant later....

Site Changes

I've resorted the sidebar to put the archives at the bottom, and I'm experimenting with some changes in the archive pages navigation.

Robots

So ... Robots — gentle companions or consumerist trap?

Yeah, the iSync stuff will have to wait. I just haven't been in the mood for writing this week.

Okay, back to work!

Yikes, it looks like all my posts expired off my very own website. I'm going to either have to update more often or change those MT settings...

The next small thing

One thing I like about Google, is that they aren't afraid of coming out with the next small thing. Some companies always want to have the next big thing, which can bite you on the butt.

Thanks to Aaron Swartz, I recently discovered the next small thing from Google — their AdWords have escaped Google's site and can now be on your site. With a little bit of HTML code, you can have a banner or skyscraper position on your site filled with text ads from Google. The company tries to match ads to the content of your site and you get a kickback if anyone clicks through.

This is a small idea, as it will only be interesting to little niche sites that would otherwise have difficulty running an advertising program. But if Google can provide useful, targeted advertising on small sites, this could be a big win for both Google, the small sites and advertisers.

Yeah! Mailsmith 2.0

I've used Mailsmith from Bare Bones Software since shortly after it was first released in the late 90s. Bare Bones makes a great text editor, BBEdit, and the idea of having a hardcore, standards-based email client from the folks that made BBEdit seemed like a certain win to me.

Also, I subscribe and post to technical email lists, which don't appreciate HTML/Rich text email.

Mailsmith was certainly a competent email client, but it hasn't been super speedy — a problem made worse by the fact that I don't buy a new computer every year. With Apple's Mac OS X, I started to use Apple Mail for all but my email lists. When Mailsmith fetched new mail it would often stall the whole machine while it downloaded and stored 30 to 50 emails.

The new version 2.0 completely eliminates these complaints. Even on an older machine with thousands of emails in an email box, Mailsmith is very responsive.

Another favorite feature of mine is that new version also eliminates the programs separate address book, integrating instead with the system Address Book.

Kudos to the Bare Bones staff — especially for making this a free upgrade for users of the previous current version.

iCalm

As you may have guessed, I've calmed down a bit after having some trouble with my update to Apple's iSync v. 1.1 and Bluetooth 1.2.1.

Some of the trouble I had was from trying to use two Bluetooth devices at once, which does not seem cool anymore — at least when one of the devices is a Palm. I also had some general sync problems between my desktop, laptop, palm and phone. The two problems together just about drove me nuts, but after I switched to IR for the Palm I managed to get everything cleared up.

I still think the .Mac sync stuff is a little flaky, I had several days of seeing appointment that had been deleted off both machines turning up during the .Mac sync.

I also think it would be helpful to have at least Palm's level of sync control — where we can say the system address book always overwrites the iPod. I really can't imagine wanting the data from the iPod taking precedence over other data ... the iPod doesn't do data entry on its own anyway. I just don't have a good idea of how I'd want the UI to behave.

Two bands

Submitted for your approval, two bands from opposite ends of a long, dark highway some call ... the Internet.

One band, Vast, is well known for writing one of the darkest love songs ever — "Pretty When You Cry."

The other band, The Polyphonic Spree, is an optimistic group of Christians with a much different sound. Perhaps representative of them is their Light and Day.

What strange thread connects these two?

Flash navigation, the anti-HTML.

They are still interesting bands, by the way. But it you aren't Nose Pilot, 100% Flash is usually not the way to go.