Use and abuse of the Mac’s “monolithic” menu-bar has a long and proud history. Surely anyone with a Mac in the 80’s had installed SuperClock, which added a clock to the menu bar. In fact, so many people did so that Apple finally just put the feature right into the OS. And when they took it out in the Public Beta of Mac OS X, users demanded that it be returned, which it was.

But with Panther, aren’t we seriously running out of menu bar space, and aren’t we doing things on the menu bar that could and should be on the Dock?

Here’s the right side of a fairly typical Panther menu bar:

From left to right, those icons are iChat, AirPort signal strength, keyboard (so I can type in Japanese or look up unicode values), battery indicator, clock, and my user name (fast user switching is on).

If I were on an 800×600 screen, I’d probably already be in trouble, but watch what happens when I run XCode:

Clang! XCode’s huge number of menus has clobbered all my menu-bar extras! Now how am I going to look up unicode hex values or check my battery… switch to the Finder just to get my menu-bar goodies back?

Yes, I can mitigate this by turning off fast-user switching, using an analog clock, etc. But that doesn’t resolve the basic issue that the menu-bar is a fixed space. It doesn’t scroll, items on it don’t resize, so when there’s too much stuff up there, someone’s going to lose. If only there were some UI element that could scroll and resize and be nice and handy…

Oh wait, there is! The Dock! We could put these menu-bar icons on the dock, and they’d gracefully resize when there are too many. Moreover, use of color is better tolerated by the Dock, which could be used by “indicator” dock icons. For example, here are two such dock icons that give me info at a glance:

Even though my Dock is very small, I can still read these indicators easily. On the left is Fire, which shows I have two logged in buddies. If you look closely, you’ll notice two dots on the left side of the icon, indicating I’m logged into two services (Yahoo and MSN). With magnification on, I could mouse over the icon to see it more clearly. The next icon is Activity monitor, whose use of color is easily readable even at this size (but wouldn’t be if I were red-green color-blind… maybe the colors should be configurable).

Wouldn’t it be great if I could put my battery and AirPort indicators down there? Well, pre-Jaguar, I could. Earlier versions of Mac OS X had “Dock Extras” to do just this. Later versions of Mac OS X actually delete these applications, so it was only in a MacWorld article that I could find a picture of these dock-based indicators:

I find these Dock-based indicators much more convenient than their menu-based replacements. So what happened? In an Ars Technica review of 10.1, John Siracusa notes that Apple had originally been concerned with menu bar clutter in the Classic Mac OS, and retaliated by making the menu bar off limits to third party developers, which resulted in ungainly hacks, which apparently prompted Apple to offer a proper menu-bar API. I guess since then they’ve gone to town themselves, as a tour of /Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras shows.

There’s a good argument for menu items and against Dock-based indicators: lots of users hide their Dock, so an indicator there is completely wasted. Point taken. Another is that Dock icons have to be square-ish in nature, which didn’t work particularly well for the digital clock (it’s also true that the fine lines of Apple’s clock don’t scale down very well - bigger hands would be an obvious fix).

But this may be a matter of taste and user choice. Right now, the Date & Time system preference lets me either have a menu bar clock or a floating window clock. I’d like a third option: putting it back in the Dock. I’ve gotten more used to the Dock as a useful tool, and menu-bar addiction is one Classic-ism I’m more than ready to leave behind.

Dock or menu bar? What’s your preference?

If you step back for a moment and look at the last few years of Apple evolution, you might notice a cycle, like the seasons, beginning to take shape.

We’ve had operating system revs in the fall, iLife announcements at the New Year, and something fun in the spring. It’s an easy rhythm to fall into, and of course just as soon as I get comfortable, the whole thing will be turned upside down. But for this New Year, I think the pattern is going to hold.

I remember asking an Apple product manager about a particular program back in New York. I said, “Not much has happened with that for a while. What gives?” He looked back at me, and in typical Apple fashion, he spoke in parables instead of facts and said, “Well, you know, every app has its day. Today it’s iTunes, tomorrow, who knows?”

In my opinion, there are a few Mac applications that are ready to be reintroduced to the spotlight. At the top of that list is iPhoto. As you know, this is software near and dear to my heart, but it needs a little work. I’d like to see a more robust database managing information beneath that user-friendly exterior. Rendezvous sharing, as we have in Image Capture and iTunes is a no-brainer. And the addition of a few more basic editing tools, such as unsharp mask would be quite welcome. And why not have it handle those little QuickTime movies our cameras shoot so we can add them to our slideshows?

I’ve been doing some work in iMovie lately and would like to see some enhancements there too. For one thing, it seems a little less stable in Panther than it used to be. I’ve even had it quit on me, which is unusual for an Apple app outside of Safari. I still want more audio tracks too. iMovie 3 was a solid improvement over version 2, but it needs to keep evolving. Many video shooters just aren’t Final Cut people. It’s too intimidating for them. Let’s keep iMovie moving along for them, and for the rest of us who like to cut video quickly, but want a polished product when finished.

Finally, I think iCal needs a bit of love. When I switched to Panther, I moved from Palm Desktop to iCal and Address Book. I don’t regret the move, but I think iCal is a good idea that hasn’t reached its potential yet. Little things need to be added, such as when you ctrl-click on the Dock icon you see today’s appointments, so we can fully embrace this app as our calendar program.

Like everyone else, I don’t know what Steve is going to say on stage at Macworld SF. It looks like we’ll have some iPod news, and probably an iTunes rev to go with it. But let some other apps have their day too. And I’m putting iPhoto and iMovie at the top of my wish list.

The checklist seems endless when getting ready for a holiday road trip. Is the house secured? Animals taken care of? Gifts ready to go?

But when I’m staring down 8 hours of highway, I have additional preparations that must be attended to. Is the iPod charged? Did I download a new book to listen to? Should I buy some music?

Buying music in a hurry is hard for me. Generally speaking, the process of searching for, previewing, deciding, then building a custom album is as much entertainment as listening to the songs themselves. I’m not accustomed to rushing through this chain of events. By doing so, I don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.

But trying to get ready for a road trip demands desperate measures. Like Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, preparations must be made, and they must be made quickly. (Although my briefcase doesn’t look anything like his inside.)

I decided to give iTunes Essentials a spin. If you haven’t looked into it, it’s a relatively new feature where Apple music buffs have assembled playlists based on themes, such as “Acoustic Rock Collection,” that are ready for your listening enjoyment. If you don’t already have any of the Essentials songs in your music library, then you can download the entire bunch just like an album.

I tried two of the Essentials collections, and thought the selections were darn good. It was like listening to a radio DJ in a good grove spinning one great track after another. The thing that surprised me, however, is that iTunes didn’t add any new information to the song’s metadata to make it easy to reassemble the songs into a playlist. For some reason I thought I would see something like “Classic hip-Hop” in one of the info fields such as Grouping.

So in order to reassemble the list, I changed my View Options to show the “Date Added” column, then I could click on the arrow in the column header to display the most recent songs added to my library. Then I created a custom playlist by the same name of the Essentials collection and dragged the songs over to it.

All in all, this method worked pretty good. But it left me wondering if there’s an easier way to manage new iTunes music, especially when I’m in a hurry. If you have any tips, I’d really like to hear them.

Bottom line, I was happy to have new tracks to listen to while rolling down the highway. Between the two Essentials collections I downloaded, and the Audible book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, I enjoyed my travels more than I would have otherwise.

I’m looking for some tips to help me manage new music more quickly, such as when I’m getting ready for a road trip.

My favorite place to work at home is on the couch with a laptop connected via an AirPort network. My cat’s favorite place to nap is on my lap in that little bit of open space between the computer and my shirt.

Everyone seemed happy until recently when I was lucky enough to get my hands on a 17″ G4 PowerBook for testing. I’m loving it, but the cat doesn’t seemed impressed. Of course cats don’t have deadlines.

By now I’m sure you’re familiar with the specs for the 17″ — they’re good. The monitor is a 1440 x 900 widescreen TFT, the CPU clocks in at 1.33 GHz, and graphics are powered by the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM. The computer I’m using has been beefed up with 1.5 Gig of RAM.

What’s interesting to me, is not so much that the PowerBook feels fast, as much as it feels right. In other words, it does things as you would expect it too. I don’t think about performance, and that’s the way I like it.

What I do think about are its real improvements over the 15″ TiBook I’ve been using, starting with the hinge that connects the monitor to the body. It is smooth with just the right amount of tension. I know the hinge seems like a silly thing to praise, that is until you have one that you don’t like. I don’t care much for the hinges in the iBooks, and I’m not ecstatic about the one on the TiBook. But this hinge is sweet, and sturdy.

Then there is the keyboard: solid, responsive, and backlit by using over 200 fiber optics. I can barely wait for evening. This backlit keyboard is my favorite laptop invention in a long time. It’s beautiful, futuristic looking, and very useful.

This is also a cooler machine temperature-wise. It’s much more comfortable on my lap, and far less noisy than the TiBook because the fan isn’t kicking into high gear three times an hour.

I’m also digging the improved speakers with much more realistic stereo separation. This is really noticeable when watching DVDs, with the sound moving around in a 3 dimensional space around the laptop. And speaking of DVDs, the 17″ screen is stunning. I pick up details that I didn’t notice when watching the same disc on the television monitor. For my latest test I forced myself to watch the second installment of LOTR again… just for research purposes of course.

AirPort performance is improved too. I get an extra bar of reception over the TiBook. And no more turning my computer to funny angles just to maintain an Internet connection.

At nearly 7 pounds, this is more machine to lug around. I also had to break out my bag from this year’s WWDC because the 17″ wouldn’t fit in my existing backpack. But I forget about all of that the minute I pop open the screen.

If you live a text-only life, this PowerBook might not be for you. Also, if you’re not in the mood to spend over $3,000 US for a notebook, then you might want to look at another model. But if you have the budget for it, and demand crisp audio, saturated pictures, and big time video performance, the 17″ PowerBook is a dream machine. And even when I’m working in text, I can have side by side documents open at full size. Spreadsheets are pretty fun too.

All of this seems lost on the cat however. Not even my lap is big enough for her and the 17″. Therefore, I think she prefers the 15″ model. Well, that makes one of us…

Now that we’re reasonably sure that Steve is going to speak at Macworld SF, it’s time to get the rest of our plans in order for arguably one of the most enjoyable computer shows in the U.S.

As I think about Macworld, though, I’m having different sentiments this year. And I’d like to take a few minutes to run these thoughts by you.

First, Apple is coming off of an amazing year: the broad acceptance of Mac OS X, the iTunes Music Store, truly useful and integrated Apple software, the invigorated partnership with IBM, and great hardware out the kazoo. Too bad the computer industry doesn’t allow companies to celebrate the helluva year they’ve just had instead of demanding what’s next. Macworld SF would be a great place to mark the occasion.

That doesn’t mean anyone is going to rest on their laurels. New development cycles are well underway at Apple and there will be lots of wonderful stuff appearing up the road. But what about this January? Even the golden goose skips a day now and then.

OK, so much for my magnanimous side. Now here’s my problem: I don’t like the current state of smartphones. It’s crazy to replace a phone every six months, like I see a lot of my peers doing. And to tell you the truth, I’m not really impressed with what I see them using.

The Treo 600 showed some promise; that is, until I noticed that it doesn’t include Bluetooth. And it doesn’t exactly sync seamlessly with my data. I can pick apart every other device in that space too.

If I had a phone that synched via Bluetooth with my Address Book, iCal, and iPhoto — and one that was software updateable so I wouldn’t have to buy a new one six months up the road, I would buy it. Apple can bring some sanity to this market in the same way they brought sanity to digital music, laptop computing, Unix on the desktop, and consumer applications.

I know my fellow Mac compatriots also have their wishes — hopefully, some of them will be answered at Macworld SF. But either way, at the end of this tremendous year in Mac computing, I just want to tip my hat to the developers, engineers, middle managers, tech support staff, sales folks, and the patient saints who man Genius Bars across this great land.

You, and hundreds of others who work for Apple, have provided us with one of the most exciting rides in recent computing history. Thank you.

And whether or not I get that phone I want, Macworld for me is going to be a celebration — for the year we’ve had, and for good times ahead.

BTW: O’Reilly & Associates are planning lots of activites for Macworld. If you want to see what’s going on, be sure to visit our Macworld page.

Related link: https://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13170

Robert Bruce Thompson pointed me to an article about Best Buy clueing into the growing number of hardware enthusiasts: “If you are Best Buy, with Dell dropping margins on one side, and the case mod crowd spurning cheap Pavillion boxes on the other, where do you turn? You provide the bling-bling set with the tools they need to make the machines they crave.”

Santa Steve has been mighty good to us this year… a new iPod, the G5, iTunes Music Store, Safari 1.0, Panther, XCode… the list goes on.

But there are a couple of items that the pundits and the rumor sites say we might see in 2004, and if it’s all the same to y’all in Cupertino, don’t bother with these:

• The Video iPod - Oh it seems so obvious: iPods are cool, QuickTime is cool. Why not put put MPEG-4 on your iPod and take your movies with you? Um, because:
  • You can’t rip DVD’s, at least not practically or legally
  • You can’t really do anything else while watching video, whereas the iPod is all about doing other things while taking your CD collection with you
  • A 2″x2″ screen? What is this, QuickTime 1.0 on a Centris? Get real.
• Tablet Mac - Again, the pundits think it’s obvious: handwriting recognition is cool, WiFi is cool. But if this is such a cool idea, then why is the Tablet PC such a flop? Can you say “solution in search of a problem”? I wonder if these stupid things will ever sell even as well as the Newton.
• Apple flat-screen TV - Well, why not? It seems like every other computer manufacturer is selling TV’s. And the iPod is a consumer electronics smash hit, right? Eh. For one, Steve is known to loathe television. Moreover, I don’t think Apple’s core competencies come to bear here - “it just works” may be shocking in the computer world, but it’s a basic assumption in consumer electronics. In fact, I’d be afraid to buy a TV from the big PC vendors… unless the box says it’s certified Microsoft-free.
• Anything “Extreme” - “Quartz Extreme”… “AirPort Extreme”… Final Cut Pro’s “RT Extreme”… please give it an “extreme” break already. Nobody wants “Apple Works Extreme”.
• The continued existence of a US-only iTunes Music Store - OK first off, let’s note our high esteem for Apple, that we’re asking even more from a company that has (as people smarter than me have noted) basically reinvented the music industry for the sake of selling more iPods.
  
       But in the next 400,000 songs that get added, could we have a few that don’t suck?
  
       Seriously, my music store experience is usually something along the lines of “Can’t find ‘Thelonious Monk’. Did you mean ‘Monkees’?”
  
       I admit my tastes are atypical - I don’t think I’ve bought a CD from an American act in at least a year. It’s all been Canadian, British, and especially Japanese. Every year at Anime Weekend Atlanta, I typically blow at least $200 at my favorite legit CD vendor, and it would have been more this year had they not been sold out of Sakura Taisen (”Best. Videogame-inspired musical theatre steam-punk anime. Ever.”). As for American music, we’ve got the no-talents from American Idol (a TV show in which people who can’t sing are gradually eliminated from the contestant pool, crowning the least bad singer as the “winner”), inane hip-hoppers with tedious beats and straining-to-be-pornographic lyrics, and even worse rockers replacing bad guitar solos with bad raps.
  
       So I import CD’s of music I can stand, because the CD format works everywhere in the world. Regionally-controlled online music distribution takes away that benefit, reducing my choices to a big bag of suck. Granted, a very big bag, with a nice interface, but still a bag of suck. Y’know, the internet was supposed to give us more choices, not less.
  
       This is really the music empires’ fault, and maybe they’ll catch up with the 21st century at some point and work out world-wide licensing schemes. In the meantime, Reuben and Clay are not getting any blocks on my iPod, thank you very much.

What else belongs on our anti-wish list?

Related link: https://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?TipsForWardAtMicrosoft

Ward Cunningham, father of all things Wiki has taken an Architect position at Microsoft. If you’ve any tips for Ward about his new employer, please do share them on his TipsForWardAtMicrosoft page.

Related link: https://www.wintercorp.com/

The
Slashdot World’s Largest Databases Ranked thread
discusses the Winter Corp.’s top 10 largest database list. When you look at the list, you’ll see that all the DBMS engines are commercial engines.

So, what are the top 10 largest databases using Open Source DBMSes?

Related link: https://danger.com

In February of 2001, I wrote an article on what was wrong with the current state of computing, PDAs, and wireless. My argument was that it was a foolish direction to pursue devices that were all about storing data and less about moving it. I felt that smaller wasn’t better, smarter was.

It’s 2003 and I’m still waiting for my predictions and desires to come true. There has been a staggering lack of compelling development in the past three years and for awhile I never actually thought Bluetooth would show up.

I want wireless devices to focus more on tools and less on browsing. We don’t need more new ways to view content that we are already ignoring, and what wireless should represent is simply the door to our world, not just the world itself. Handheld devices should serve as the portal to our own personal servers. They should direct information, not merely store it.

Consider This:
I’m sitting with you in a restaurant. We start to discuss a project and I decide to send you a 300MB project file. I pull out my handheld, you pull out yours. My handheld connects to my server, I locate the folder and our handhelds automatically negotiate the transfer of the files between my server and yours through a secure connection. The only data passing through our handheld devices is a security handshake and instructions on where and how to send the files. Minimal packets move mountains. Simple enough idea, and I’ve been waiting for a simple execution of it for three years.

Glimmer of Hope
Over two years ago I conceived and executed a promotional idea for the HandSpring Visor and Springboard line of products. The idea was simple, travel over 10,000 miles in about 30 days. Document the entire trip daily using only the Visor and Springboard modules. No laptop or cell phone (other than the VisorPhone). My wife and I would visit over 20 states and about 13 CompUSA locations in order to promote the idea of true mobile computing…to show that we were on the verge of a dream I had since my wireless (through Metricom) Apple Newton 2100.

After the trip, I stopped using my Visor. Handspring discontinued the Springboard and I lost interest in PDAs. The Treo was released, but it’s price and reliance on the “phone” metaphor for it’s design didn’t interest me. I had my iPod and that took care of most of my needs. In fact I never thought I would go back to using a PDA/wireless device again, until last week when SunCom (thanks Karen Rountree) & Danger (thanks Susan George) sent me a Hiptop wireless device.

From moment one I was smitten with this device. It is pure geek sex appeal with an urban-tech look & feel. The flip screen is not only cool, but it and the iPod are the best execution of handheld ergonomics I’ve seen in years…and the UI is almost as good as the Newton…graceful, quick, and simple. In fact, it reminds me of a device that Apple might make.

While the HipTop has it’s faults, it does a lot of things right.

Data Is Centralized
I don’t backup my Danger device. It backs itself up…always. Remember in the past when the juice of your Palm died out or an unexplained crash toasted all your data until you HotSync? And of course you were always miles from your computer. Not a problem with the HipTop. In the case of data loss, the moment my HipTop device has a wireless connection to their server, my data is back. I like that my device works for me, not me for it.

Keyboards Beat Handwriting
I hate Graffiti…always have. I hate that I can’t put down a steady stream of thoughts without first translating my ideas into shorthand (”which way is U and which is V”). The best thing HandSpring ever did for the Treo, was ditching Graffiti for a keyboard. My problem with most devices is that they focus on phone design over data. Danger’s design is data first, phone second. I’d say that 90% of my communication is based on text, not voice…so Email and text messaging are crucial to me. I am pleased that Danger didn’t sit down and say, “How can we put a data device into this phone.” and instead said, “How can we put a phone into this data device.”

Excellent Metaphors
The Danger Device FEELS like a computing device. Drop down menus, excellent user feedback, and yes you can run more than one application at a time. For example, while requesting a web page, you can log into AIM, then take a quick look at your email, and when the web page is loaded…it will let you know. Having an AIM chat, but need to check your mail? Go ahead, you won’t lose your connection.

Terminal Monkey
I downloaded an application called Terminal Monkey to my HipTop and I nearly plotzed when I logged onto my home server through an SSH2 connection. When I saw “Welcome to Darwin,” I couldn’t believe it. I launched applications, moved files, modified my server, and killed a process that was hung. Sweet!

Problems? There Are Some
Certainly this is not a perfect device. The lack of a touch screen, the lack of connectivity support for a home computer (USB or Bluetooth), and the awkwardness of the device at times as a phone, are just some of the issues I’d like to see resolved. But if you ask me, this device has more critical issues right than wrong. The HipTop feels more like a fourth generation device than a first. In fact, if Danger is ever looking for an east coast evangelist…you should check out my resume!

It’s been three long years of waiting for the perfect wireless device, and while perfection isn’t here yet…we’re another step closer. Handheld/wireless developers should take note of Danger…because they are one step closer to wireless handheld Nirvana.

Twas a month before Macworld,
and all through my head.
Came visions of Panther,
and books, put to bed.

Yes, folks, it’s been a busy Fall writing/editing season here in MacLand at O’Reilly. Like other publishers, as soon as we knew Panther was on the way, we went into high gear and started plotting the course to update our Mac books and get new ones into the mix.

The first to release on Panther was my own, the Mac OS X Panther Pocket Guide, released only a couple weeks ago. But we didn’t stop with just a simple little book. No, there’s far more in the works, and before year’s end, there will be five new Mac books from O’Reilly waiting for you:

• Published as part of the Apple Developer Connection series, Matt Neuburg’s AppleScript: The Definitive Guide has been in the works, and was tweaked at the last minute to include Panther coverage. This is the first major AppleScript book to be released in years, and in many ways, it demystifies AppleScript like never before. If you’ve been wanting to learn AppleScript, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.
• Mac OS X Unwired, by Tom Negrino and Dori Smith, focuses solely on the wireless side of Mac OS X, covering AirPort wireless networks and Bluetooth.
• Another update to release is Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther, by Dave Taylor and Brian Jepson. This book is intended for Unix newbies, and is particularly useful for Mac OS 9 converts who are just getting started with Mac OS X and want to learn more about what happens under its Aqua interface.

And finally, two books I can’t wait to see in print:

• Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition, by none other than David Pogue
• Running Mac OS X Panther, by James Duncan Davidson

What would a new release of Mac OS X be like without a new edition of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual? Well, it would be like daytime, but without the Sun. There’s a reason why this book has been the best-selling computer book for the past two years: David explains Mac OS X like nobody else can. You’ll learn more than just the basics with the Missing Manual, and by its end, you’ll be hungry for the next book…

Running Mac OS X Panther takes over where the Missing Manual leaves off. Duncan takes you deep into Mac OS X’s Unix core and shows you how to do things few books barely even scratch the surface of. Here you’ll find extensive coverage on Open Directory, networking and network services, printing with CUPS, working with disks and disk images, and more. The book covers both the GUI and command-line tools, but spends most of its time swimming around the Unix layer.

The first three books are already available, and the last two should be going to the printer shortly, making all of them available by the end of the year, with plenty of time for Macworld San Francisco.

And this is just a taste of what’s to come; there are more updates and new titles releasing in the New Year.

Are there other Mac topics you’d like to see us cover? If so, let me know…

Related link: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt

Yesterday I was complaining to a friend about the difficulty in making up domain names to use as examples in documentation, since anything reasonable you can think of is guaranteed to exist, probably held by some random low-rent commercial outfit. This prompted him to type the ubiquitous example.com address into his Web browser for gaiety’s sake, and thus, to our surprise, did we discover RFC 2606. Drafted in 1999, it forbids anyone except our friends at IANA from owning the example.com domain, making it safe for use in documentation. (The same goes for example.org and example.net.)

But what if you’d like to use two or three completely different domains in your examples? Well, the RFC also declares that domain registries can’t even come near the .example TLD. I find this theoretically useful, but I’m not convinced that “anything.example” is as instantly recognizable as a domain as “anything.com” is. Perhaps it could be made to work through some crafty context-application.

[Covered by Mike Smith of XML Hack months ago, but it’s news to me anyway, so you get to read about it again. Hooray for weblogs.]

DocBook design daddy Norm Walsh ponders a bottom-up DocBook redesign, and then he ponders some more. He wants to modernize and streamline the language, tossing out a lot of redundancies and designing it with XML, the Web, and things like RELAX-NG in mind. (None of these technologies existed during DocBook’s initial design phase.)

I can appreciate this sentiment, and it reminds me of my recent discovery of James Clark’s nXML-mode for Emacs. It’s interesting to watch the often confusing SGML-era cruft finally start to wash off the XML applications I’ve been using since shortly after its introduction, five years ago.

Link found on the WhatIsWrongWithDocBook page from DocBook’s Wiki, where more (and more recent) discussion may be found.

Related link: https://news.com.com/1604-2-5103278-2.asx?tr+win

The link above takes you to a CNET News.com video interview with Joe Astroth, executive VP, Autodesk, about their location based suite for mobile phones that provides a service/business finder, traffic information, and find-a-friend services on a mobile phone. The J2ME application is demonstrated on a Sony Ericsson P800 smartphone. Mr. Astroth was not at liberty to disclose which US based wireless phone service provider would provide this service to their customers.

What kind of location-aware services would you want on your wireless phone or PDA?

In a previous weblog, Favorite Photo Tips, I shared a couple interesting photo tips then asked readers to post theirs. Many did just that. As promised, my favorites of the reader-submitted bunch get a signed copy of the Digital Photography Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition. So without further yammering, here are my picks (in no particular order):

Digital camera as communication tool by Phil Calvert
While traveling in Japan I found a novel use for a digital camera. Most of the restaurants there have lifelike plastic displays of the food they serve. Since I couldn�t speak Japanese, I just took a picture of what I wanted to eat and showed it to the waiter. He thought it was very funny, but I did get what I ordered.

Low Light Autofocusing by Conny Svensson
Try to focus on something better lit at the same range as the subject you wish to photograph. Maybe close to a lamp or some other light source. Continue holding down the shutter button halfways, point at the subject, and take the shot.

Keeping track of spent and freshly charged batteries by Phil Calvert
I have a Canon A70 that uses four AAs. I always put the spare, freshly changed batteries in the carrier with their polarities alternating, one after another; in other words, battery no. 1 has �+� facing up, battery no. 2 has �-� facing up, etc. When I change batteries, I drop the spent batteries out of the camera and slip the new ones in — if you practice you won�t have to fuss with getting the new batteries oriented right, you can just drop them right in. Then I take the old ones and put them in the carrier with there polarities matching, thus avoiding the embarrassment of putting spent batteries back into the camera.

Level Panoramas by Charles Eaton
You can shoot level panoramas keeping the full height of your image and not have to crop the top and bottom of it. The trick is to use a tripod with a three axis pan head with a two axis bubble level in the flash shoe of your camera. Do a few test pans to make sure everything remains level as you swing the camera through the shots. Your panos will improve.

Picture Notes by Mark W.
When I go backpacking I can easily take 150 pictures over 5 days. Actually, I could take more if I had the memory for it. But the problem is that when I get home, I may not remember what some of my pictures are of. So I bring my palm pilot and take notes for every picture I shoot. That way, days later, I know that picture 84 is of “Horseshoe Meadow”, not “some nice looking field somewhere in the wilderness.”

Editor’s note — If you camera has voice annotations, then that’s another way to identify locations for reference later. And don’t forget to take pictures of signs too, when they’re available; it’s a lot faster than writing a note.

And one bonus tip…

Super Vision by jonblock
I stumbled on this trick last summer while on a small boat with a group of people trying to see an eagle’s nest on shore. Some people were having trouble finding the nest among the treetops. I pulled out the camera, used the optical zoom to get as close as possible, and snapped a picture. Next, I switched to the camera’s preview mode, zoomed in on the photo, and found the nest. Now, by zooming back out in steps, others could see exactly where to squint when they looked back up into the trees.

Pretty good list folks. Thanks to all who participated. If the favorites could send me their mailing information, I’ll get those books sent asap.

Inexpensive printers are a disposable commodity these days. It’s easy enough to pick up a decent ink jet printer for under $100. When that $100 printer stops working, just buy a brand new printer, with fresh cartridges, and simply start over. Why spend hours troubleshooting something if you’re going to have to spend $60 on new cartridges anyhow?

So that’s what I did…got that .Mac renewal gift certificate, and ordered up a snazzy new printer.

My plan was to grab a beer, a hammer, and a screwdriver, and see what recyclable pieces I could get out of the old one. And I’ll admit, I started down that path with a bit of glee, a la Office Space.

But the truth is, I’d much rather repair something of quality than trash something like this. And I think many of us miss out on the pleasure of repairing or having repaired objects. These are our tools — wouldn’t it be nice if they could give us the same pleasure as a old treasured baseball glove with new lacings, or a nicely worn tool with a new blade?

In any case, I just got into the dismantling when I realized that I wasn’t really sure if this plastic was recyclable by our local service or not. And so I turned to Google.

Aha! All is revealed. In my case, Lexmark has a free recycling program that fits the bill nicely (I hope they won’t mind getting one that’s somewhat in pieces). Here’s a list of printer recycling sources I found pretty quickly:

• Epson (fee-based, but with a coupon for a new product).

• Dell has a program for printers and computers for a fee.

• Lexmark’s Free Printer Recycling (US) — see this page for other countries and products.

• Don’t miss Schuyler’s weblog,
  Bringing Linux to Third World Communities, for ideas on recycling computers.

I still think our ultimate goal needs to be to use less altogether, but I’m glad there are some recycling options out there.

Do you have other good leads for recycling — or even better, ways to avoid the need to recycle in the first place?

I’ve always been a big supporter of the “idea” of digital photography. I remember buying my first Apple Quicktake many years ago, and being tickled even though the quality wasn’t really there. Two years ago I convinced my wife to go digital on a cross country trip. Since then we’ve been completely film free. She even stopped using her fancy Minolta SLR. During this time we’ve lived with the little idiosyncrasies of digital cameras and learned coping mechanisms to ensure a good picture. However, we recently had a new baby and we realized that our current “middle-of-the-road” camera would no longer cut it. Missed opportunities, blurred shots, bad lighting, poor flash performance, and abysmal battery life had turned her back to her film camera.

I was in trouble…I needed to turn her back to digital, but I had to solve these issues. I turned to our resident O’Reilly expert, Derrick Story, to recommend a new solution. We had five criteria:

a) Fast shutter speed
b) Better battery life
c) Faster flash regeneration or a hot shoe
d) SLR
e) Future growth options

I had found a number of solutions in the $600 range, but Derrick steered me in a price range much higher than I originally wanted to go…the $1,000 Canon Digital Rebel. The sticker shock made me think twice, but as I looked closer at the Digital Rebel, I realized that Derrick might just be right. Why compromise performance for price?

I picked it up last week at the Apple store in Richmond, VA (I was the envy of the sales people), and let me tell you, this camera rocks! Not only does it leave me speechless, but my wife decided to sell her Minolta on ebay. We’ve pushed the flash to the limit…not only is it always ready, the battery life has been amazing. At 6.3 megapixels we get the quality we want, and with it’s speedy shutter, we no longer have blurred shots of something that looks like it might be an infant.

Thanks Derrick…I knew you were the right guy to ask!

Anyone else have one?

Another reason why I love OS X became apparent the other day when my DSL connection stopped working for the first time in two years and I called Tech Support:

Tech Staff: Hmmm…I don’t see your modem showing up.
Me: Okay…
Tech Staff: Here’s what I need you to do. I want you to boot into DOS.
Me: Whoa…hold on. I’m running OS X.
Tech Staff: Oh…okay…well then just unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in.
Me: Okay…it’s working.

Um…I know I only work in Windows a few times a week, but last time I checked it was 2003…are we still booting into DOS? To me this sounded like, “Take rock from cave. Smash Computer. Ug fix computer good!”

Similar experiences?