Related link: https://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/

MacJournal is an old friend of mine, an app I sometimes don’t use for months on end, but when I return to it, it feels comfortable and familiar.

The latest release, version 2.6, includes all sorts of updates and new features - you can now use MacJournal to post directly to Blogger or LiveJournal weblogs, if you like.

But there’s more. Author Dan Schmipf has let it be known that there are some nifty hidden features that can be switched on with some simple Terminal bashing.

So if you want your MacJournal to have the brushed metal look (can’t imagine why you would, but each to his own), or to revert to the simpler interface of version 2.1, or to transform :) into a smiley face, you can accomplish all this and more in the hidden preferences section.

Dan is working hard on updates. Reading between the lines on his weblog, the next version might include wiki-style links, nested journals, more formatting options for text, and if rumour is to be believed, a full-screen writing mode.

All of which pushes this wonderful little writing tool closer to being an all-encompassing word processor and notes manager, and much more than just a personal journal keeper.

Don’t you just love it when an app has hidden stuffs?

I got excited when I ran across bbZip, but
disappointed when I found it doesn’t run on my 7100. Fortunately, it
comes with source, so I’ll check it out when and if RIM approves my
request for the C++ SDK.

Meanwhile, it turns out I can run
midlets on my Blackberry, so I decided I’d check out ZeeME. I visited the page in my Blackberry browser, clicked the link for the jad, and all I saw was plain text. I thought I might have to resort to converting
the jar to a cod file, but I decided to check one more thing before I went to extremes. It turns out that the ZeeME site is reporting a MIME type of text/plain–in plain terms, this means that the Blackberry 7100 browser thinks it is a text file. I’ve sent off an email about this to the author, but in the meantime, here’s a link you can use: ZeeME.jad.

Text input is a little funny–you’ll need to scroll down to the bottom of the screen and start typing. The Enter/Return key doesn’t work: click to get to the menu, and then select Input to send your command (and if you did type any return characters, it will probably have trouble parsing it). Since ZeeME is open source, I bet this would be an easy fix.

The ZeeME page also includes ZeeME Packager, which lets you package up your favorite ZCode games for use with ZeeME. Unlike other Z-machine implementations, ZeeME doesn’t read the game off of the filesystem–it’s embedded in the jar. If your game is too big (I haven’t figured out the limit yet, but it seems to be around 64k), the BlackBerry won’t let you install it. I wonder if you could hack ZeeME to download the zcode files from the if-archive?

Are you taking Interactive Fiction into your own hands?

Related link: https://www.ubuntulinux.org

This morning, a strange package made its way into my mailbox from Zurich. I opened it up to discover the distribution discs for Ubuntu Linux. I’d read about Ubuntu on K5 a little while back and had signed up to receive some free discs. Since then, I’d pretty much forgotten about it entirely. But, they didn’t forget about me and with the discs in hand, I went off to give it a try.

My first impression of Ubuntu came from its packaging. The two disc distribution comes in a sleek cardboard booklet. On the cover are three individuals of mixed heritage in a group hug, perhaps reinforcing the project’s philosophy: the back of the package tells us that “Ubuntu is an ancient African word that means ‘humanity toward others’.” Inside are the two CDs. One is an installation disc. The other, a live CD, allowed me to easily boot up a spare machine and see what all the fuss is about.

After a few minutes of hardware detection and loading softwar, I was presented with an X environment. Ubuntu uses GNOME for its desktop environment and several other best of breed apps are along for the ride. OpenOffice, FireFox, The GIMP, and Evolution all make an appearance. I found them easily enough in the Applications menu. Overall, the menus are very concise; a nice contrast from the clutter I feel plagues Fedora. An interesting thing to note about the live CD: it also includes Windows builds of those same popular OSS applications.

Impressed with the live CD, I shut the box down and booted the install disc. While the desktop environment and live CD have a very polished feel, the Ubuntu install process leaves much to be desired. The ncurses installer offers little in the way of progress toward a “user-friendly Linux”. For example, while I admit that the option to wipe out my entire drive and create a simple root/swap scheme is certainly viable, end users would be greatly benefited if there were more detailed descriptions involved. Unfortunately, my mother doesn’t know what a partition is, nor much care how much swap her system has.

After working my way through the installation, the system started up and, upon entering my login credentials, Ubuntu offered me the same sleek environment found on the live CD. Overall, the experience was pretty painless and, for the most part, user-friendly. I don’t know if I’d be comfortable sending a less savvy computer user out with any Linux distribution just yet, but Ubuntu is certainly taking steps in the right direction with its no-nonsense live CD environment, its inclusion of Windows builds of OSS apps, and its predictable six month release cycle. While some of its ideas and technologies may not be new, I feel Ubuntu offers a degree of refinment that’s just not present in similar projects.

What’s your take on Ubuntu? Recommend a different user-friendly distribution?

I sometimes walk out of the movie theater wondering how producers could spend 70 million dollars on the film I just watched. I’m sure the writer had a good idea in the beginning. But then the Hollywood machine goes about pulverizing the beautifully textured adult entree into the bland baby food I see on the screen, and all of the spirit gets crushed along the way. This doesn’t always happen. But more often than it should.

There’s been a lot of noise in my corner of the digital media world about independent music. In part, this has come about because technology has provided musicians with affordable tools to create and distribute their work. The RIAA behaving like petulant bullies has provided some motivation too.

I think it’s interesting that if music is produced independently, it’s called indie music. But all too often, if a film is produced the same way, it’s labeled as a “B Movie,” implying that it isn’t as good as an “A Movie” that you’d pay $10 for at the local cineplex. But what “B” really stands for is “budget.” These folks often have a great idea, but they don’t have 70 million dollars to spend on it. (Of course there are many bad B movies too, which proves that being poor doesn’t necessarily make you smart.)

Enter stage left Bruce Campbell, Don Coscarelli, Ossie Davis, and Brian Tyler… and on stage right, Bob Ivy as the mummy. Bubba Ho-Tep is a film about an aging Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) who wakes up in a Texas nursing home to discover that a lost Egyptian mummy has returned to life (adorning snake-skin boots and a cowboy hat) to suck the energy out of helpless rest home residents. Elvis teams up with JFK (Ozzie Davis who is black, and he’ll have to explain how that happened) to fight the mummy and save the rest home. It’s a movie about heros being heros, redemption, old age, and the monsters that stalk us.

Bruce Campbell, already a B movie cult hero for films such as Army of Darkness, plays a brilliant Elvis. There are many scenes where it’s just Elvis with his thoughts and the haunting chords from Brian Tyler’s soundtrack that somehow made me think about my own life. How could that happen in a B movie?

Bubba Ho-Tep was made for a fraction off the cost of most of the films I watch. Yet I marvel at its creativity, heart, and tenacity. I’ve always appreciated independent productions.

At our recent Mac OS X Conference, I invited Sean Fitzroy and Vikki Merriman to speak about their winning entry in the 2003 Boston 48 Hour Film Project competition. I’m looking forward to attending the DV Film Festival next month in LA. And I never miss the Digital Storytelling Festival every June in Sedona, AZ.

As I’ve thought about all of this, it finally hit me. I don’t want to be the next Steven Spielberg. I’d rather be a director more like Don Coscarelli.

Buy or rent Bubba Ho-Tep, and you’ll see why.

Earlier this fall, the Google Labs Aptitude Test was revealed. It was interesting to see what kind of tests Google uses to evaluate job candidates.

I was surprised to learn that my mother-in-law, Nancy Miller Robinson, got her chance to learn computer programming by virtue of her high score on a similar aptitude test in 1960. The “Robot Clerk Test” was administered by the US Census Bureau to interested Civil Service employees who had scored high on the Federal Service Entrance Exam. Those who scored high on the robot test were eligible to receive computer training and go on to better jobs in the Bureau as programmers, doing the work to process the data from the 1960 census. In the test, you have to write the instructions to make a robot clerk accomplish 5 tasks:

Assume that you have a robot “clerk” working for you. This clerk does not understand English but does have a limited language of his own. He works with a series of boxes and bins which are in front of him. The only spoken word which he can understand and respond to is the word “start”. All other instructions to him must be written in his own limited language, in a form which he will accept and placed where he can find them.

To accomplish the tasks, you write instruction cards that the robot executes in order. The robot reads and executes the card in Bin 00, replaces the card in Bin 00, and then proceeds to Bin 01 to execute that instruction (but, of course, the card in Bin 00 has to direct the robot to put a card in Bin 01 in the first place). And if there’s a bug in your program, the robot will throw a tantrum:

In the event the clerk proceeds to a bin which does not contain an instruction–or contains one which is not in an acceptable form–he will light a red light, destroy the cards in all the boxes and bins, and cease working.

The chance to get the computer training was a huge opportunity, especially for a single mom trying to raise three kids. Nancy says that she “didn’t even know what a computer was”, but knew it was a chance for a better job, and decided to take the test. She did very well on it, and was accepted into the training program and went on to a successful computer programming career.

The programming language they used was called “USE Compiler”, an assembly language very close to machine language.  “We got very proficient in octal and in binary.”  The computer they worked with had 16K (36-bit-words) memory and took up an entire wing of the Census Bureau which they dubbed “Memory Lane”.

Nancy also tells of a Life magazine article at the time about this new careeer that claimed that, statistically, pregnant women made the best programmers.  The article also said that this new occupation, programming, tended to burn people out quickly and they would need to go somewhere for a rest because they identified so strongly with the machines.

Luckily, a copy of the robot test has survived — but you’ll have to come up with the answers yourself. I’ve created an HTML facsimile (with the addition of some navigation at the bottom of the pages). You’ll probably want to print the pages; be sure the underlines appear on your printout (Safari on Mac OS X didn’t print them, but Firefox did nicely). Start here, and have fun!, or jump to a particular section:

• Introduction
• Instructions and Sample Problem
• Problem 1
• Problem 2
• Problem 3
• Problem 4
• Problem 5
• Answer Sheet (you’ll use one copy per problem)

Nancy would love to hear from any of her coworkers at the census. You can reach her at

Related link: https://www.pragmaticautomation.com/cgi-bin/pragauto.cgi/Monitor/Devices/BubbleBu…

I’m a big fan of using home automation techniques in non-traditional ways, and an excellent example of this is found at Mike Clark’s Pragmatic Project Automation. Mike’s detailed article tells you how to use an inexpensive X10 “starter kit” and a simple Java applet to provide subtle, but useful, information about how a software build is progressing.

Aside from the home automation bits, the other neat thing about the project is that it uses lava lamps. When the build is going well a green lava lamp happily bubbles away. As soon as the build encounters problems, the green lamp switches off and a red lava lamp begins warming up. Eventually, if the problem is not corrected, the boiling red lava will let everyone know that the project is in deep, raging trouble. Very theatrical, and much more humane than triggering a siren or alarm bells.

By the way, on the subject of sound, the article suggests that the red lamp be plugged directly into the X10 wireless transceiver so that the “clack” of turning on the built-in outlet might be heard, thus signaling the start of the build’s downward spiral. Ahh, at last, a practical reason for the annoying noise of an X10 appliance relay!

For more about software project automation, check out Mike’s presentation from the O’Reilly Mac OS X Conference.

Passers-by were shocked to see a new shop open in London at the weekend.

The like of the store, which sells computers and software, has never been seen before in this sleepy city of only eight million, almost none of them computer owners or users.

… OK, enough sarcasm. Yep, Apple’s new London store is open and for some it was an event worth camping outside in freezing temperatures to attend. For others, it was nothing more than, well, yet another computer store (let me assure non-Londoners reading this that the city has a plentiful supply of computer retailers).

As with so many Apple announcements, the media picked up on the buzz from the religious throng potential customers outside. People camping outside in the cold to buy computers (or even mystery goodie bags - I really can’t see the appeal myself, but there you go) make for good photos, and media people like photos.

So with the crowds and the cameras, it became an Event rather than just a new shop opening. But what actually happened during this event? I can tell you.

• People liked the glass stairs.
• Everyone who camped out for the night got at least a T-shirt. If fact, some people who arrived as late as 9.30am that morning got a T-shirt. They only had to queue for three hours or so, and only got rained on once or twice.
• The mood in the queue was said to be good-natured and companionable. Everybody was talking Mac stuff. I wonder if they compared Docks?
• There were in-store mini-queues to see: the 20-inch G5 iMac; a pair of 30-inch displays set up as a single extended desktop; and Tiger.
• A DJ played tunes. Very, very loud.
• Amusingly, some staff from PC World (one the UK’s largest mass-market retailers of computers; mostly x86, but some Mac stock available) stood outside in the cold, trying to hand out leaflets to bemused Apple acolytes.
• Lots of computers and iPods were sold, although some people found the crowd something of a turn-off, and were heard walking out muttering: “I’ll come back when it’s quieter.”

Were you there? Was it worth going?

The decision by developers Panic to make their Audion music player/editor available for free sparked a lot of interest when it was announced last week.

Audion has been, and remains, an excellent little app for playing and managing music. As Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser explained in a manner unusual for any business owner, Audion came this close to becoming Apple’s iTunes. But SoundJam became iTunes instead, and with iTunes so dominant, Audion simply can’t compete in any meaningful way.

But you still need Audion on your hard disk. Now that it’s available for free, you have nothing to lose, but there is a good practical reason for downloading it.

This comes from my own personal experience. I’m still using a trusty old dual USB G3 iBook, a machine that impressed me with its 20GB hard disk when I bought it about two or three years ago. Today, that hard disk is seriously overcrowded and every megabyte counts. I can’t afford to have my disk getting cluttered up with music that might be interesting, but is not actually worth keeping.

Now one of the problems with iTunes is that it doesn’t let you simply play an existing song. Download an mp3 file, double-click it, and iTunes imports it. This means making a copy of an already perfectly usable file; more disk clutter. Call me fussy if you like, but that bothers me.

The simplest way round this is to use the Finder’s built-in preview function to playback a file, but this brings its own problem. Try to do any other common tasks with the Finder while this is happening, and you’ll find them very slow. At least, that’s what happens on my creaky old G3.

Audion provides that simple drag-a-file-and-play-it functionality that iTunes lacks. If, like me, you like to listen to new music but might not want to keep it, or like to listen to radio programmes but have no need of keeping them afterwards, it’s an ideal and very useful little tool to have around.

What are your thoughts on the Audion story?

Related link: https://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/18/213226

Daniel Shefer reviews “Joel on Software,” Joel Spolsky in book form. “Spolsky is knowledgeable, funny and free of unnecessary religious fervor. Joel on Software is a must-read for developers, product managers and those who want more insight into the world of developing software.”

Related link: https://gallery.ipodlounge.com/ipod/thumbnails.php?album=18

Check out this awesome gallery of the in U2 iPod. Personally I’m not too sure about the black and red design but Dennis Lloyd, the publisher of iPodlounge, assures me it looks beautiful in person.

What do you think of the new U2 iPod?

Suddenly, people are talking about timers. Merlin Mann, productivity expert and guide to Getting Things Done (aka GTD) with Apple computers, posted a photo on Flickr that demonstrated a simple technique for keeping the computer- and net-obsessed among us focused on our work, rather than reading possibly interesting but ultimately non-work-related weblog posts on sites like the O’Reilly Network. Ahem.

His simple idea was to use a cheap kitchen timer to count down in eight-minute increments. When it pings, you ask yourself - “Am I working right now?” It’s a concentration concatenator.

Subscribers to Merlin’s 43Folders discussion group then chimed in with their suggestions for software timers.

What better reason than to list a few timers here? Some of these are directly from the 43Folders group discussion; others were found lurking in Hyperjeff’s list.

Chimoo Timer counts in hundredths of seconds, if that matters to you, and shrinks down to a tiny little window. It looks rather elegant.

Fob has a far more detailed interface and many more options; by default, it uses a large window and a clock-face metaphor for creating new timers. It can be told to display running timers in the menu bar.

Fob running in the menu bar, with a tiny Chimoo Timer window directly underneath

What else is there?

Eggtimer is free, and the source code is available. Cuppa is an old favorite of mine, and has sat in my ~/Applications folder for quite a while. I really did download it so I could time my fruit tea infusions (herbal and fruit teas have to steep for a decent time - in my opinion, 7 minutes - to make sure they have sufficient flavor).

Chronomenon is a timer and a whole lotta other things too; DockTimer sits in the Dock and counts time; Watch It costs a little money but looks very smart, matching the OS X volume and brightness control bezels.

Minuteur is French but speaks the international language of timers, so is easy to use; Pester pesters you effectively; TeaTimer is designed for real tea afficionados, and sports the fanciest-looking teacup and saucer this side of the aristocracy.

Pester, telling me quite clearly to FOCUS

What, you’re still reading this? Aren’t you supposed to be working? Come on, stop reading so many weblogs, focus! Honestly, people like you need some sort of timer to keep you on track…

Deadlines always gave me the heebie-jeebies anyway

The last few weeks have been relatively crazy for me and, between newsletters and conferences, I did not get much time for blogging… Today however, I feel like I have read one article too many about a problem that I thought would never affect me.

This problem is the importance of search engines or, rather, the seemingly overwhelming importance they had in the past weeks. Since Microsoft announced their intention to add better search capabilities to Longhorn, companies are fighting to get the best, fastest, most accurate search technology ever.

Whether it is on the web or on the computer, there seems to be a new software tool for every purpose. I can now throw my e-mail in a gigantic mailbox, save my files on any location on my hard drive and get rid of my internet bookmarks – did I mention forget about keeping track of my music or picture library? Indeed, it does not matter how messy and disorganized I am, there will always be a service or a tool that I can use to get my information back.

Need to archive these Summer 2004 pictures you took? Simply throw them with your accounting spreadsheets and cookie recipes, Spotlight will get them back for you. Need to find your bank website? Why don’t you just Google for it? These tools work, after all, and work very well! Since search is now such an important piece in the never ending marketing battle between software companies, we can enjoy some of the best algorithms around and can truly hope to grab information that was previously unavailable for us, simply because we could not see it.

Unfortunately, this worries me a lot… Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad that all these technologies exist and I find some of them truly amazing – Spotlight, for example, is stunning. What worries me is how ready we are to let others organize our lives and our information, this information that we think is so precious that we want to grasp it all and keep it constantly under control.

Indeed, if we stop organizing by ourselves and rely on a third-party (whether it is a company or an open source project) to tell us what we know and what we have, we become dependent on them and on their technology. And, since we are just pushed to be lazy, the phenomenon is expanding at frightening speeds – “Frankly, who wants to spend Christmas afternoon finding folders?” ;-).

Imagine for one second that GMail were to be discontinued or that Spotlight would become an expensive, subscription-based technology – this is pure theory here, of course. Would you then be able to re-organize your mails or your files? And how much time would it take before you would be able to access all your information again?

Of course, these technologies can be used in a positive way, as long as they help us refer and link dynamically content that we already master – which, interestingly, is the idea that seems to have started this trend. I’m all for being able to know at a glance who is linked (in any possible way) to an article I have on my hard drive. Give me more Google, more Spotlight… However, I still want to be able to keep track of it manually if the need arose one day and I’d much rather work on a stable, static system with no search capabilities whatsoever than constantly type queries in search boxes.

And you, what do you think of these search technologies?

OhmyfreakinGod…

Socks.

For your iPod.

$29.

My brain is now moosh. (Of course, all I want is the lime green one.)

What’s next? An iPod Hoodie with speakers in the hood?

I had a meeting with our creative director yesterday to see the “hot off the press” covers for our new series of titles. We call them “Fan Books,” and I’m already hooked on ‘em.

First of all, the covers are absolutely beautiful. And the interiors are just as sharp. What we’ve done with this series is create a new kind of guide for specific pieces of hardware. These books do two important things. First, they help the reader get up to speed as quickly as possible. No, we don’t tell you everything there is to know about the hardware (that’s another book altogether) — but cover the things you need to know.

Along the way we show you the absolute coolest accessories for the device. This includes everything from the most stylish cases to laptop stands with built-in fans powered by the USB port.

Everything is in full color with meticulous design. Each book is a gem unto itself (and affordable too!).

We have the first book on the shelves now, and the next four will be available by the end of the month. Here’s the current line up:

• iPod Fan Book by Kasukuni Notomi (available now).
• iBook Fan Book by Derrick Story (late Nov.).
• Treo Fan Book by Jeff Ishaq (late Nov.).
• PowerBook Fan Book by Derrick Story (late Nov.).
• Xbox Fan Book by Mark Holt Walker (late Nov.).

The last thing I want to say about these books is this: You and I will like them because of the interesting accessories and the handy information they contain in a compact package. But even better, these are books you can give to your less-geeky friends and family members to help them get acquainted with, and appreciate, these devices. They are very accessible.

I can say this for a fact because I wrote two of them — iBook and PowerBook editions. After the introduction and getting acquainted text, I walk the reader through all of the System Preferences, then discuss Safari, Mail, iChat, Address Book, iCal, Stickies, iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, and share lots of tips along the way.

If someone you know is making the switch to the Mac, or getting their first iPod, or trying the Treo, or thinking about the Xbox, take a look at these new guides. I think you’ll like what you see.

Related link: https://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/

If you want to enter text on a computer, you need to use a keyboard. Well, that’s the accepted norm. Some people use speech-to-text apps, but the vast majority use keyboards.

But now there’s another option. A software project by a physicist at Cambridge University has developed a new way of entering text on a computer.

The ingenious thing is that it works on pretty much any computer you can think of, and no new hardware is required.

The program is called Dasher, and can be downloaded for free for use on Windows, Macintosh and Linux computers. I’ve tried it on my Mac and it works perfectly. After just a few minutes of use, I was entering text into TextEdit and rather enjoying the experience.

Here’s what Dasher looks like

It works by moving an on-screen cursor to select letters. But modifications could be made to hook it up to special equipment, so that people can control a virtual mouse just by flicking their eye from side to side.

The on-screen interface is not a virtual keyboard, either. All you see is a simple small window, and a jumble of letters on the right side. As you move the cursor to that side, the letters start to move, and grow. You select one by letting it glide underneath the mouse - that’s all there is to it.

Better still, Dasher includes code to help it predict what word you are trying to create. Select an ‘h’, then an ‘e’, and you’ll see the letters ‘llo’ zooming in from the right to complete the whole word - “hello”.

It sounds bizarre and complicated, but after just a few minutes of playing, it’s very easy to get to grips with the basics. Some more complex movements take a bit more time to grasp, though. While I was having fun when the software correctly predicted the word I wanted to enter, I felt frustrated and flustered when it got the word wrong and forced me to backtrack and start again.

It was also hard to use without quite intense concentration, which is where touch-typists who can type and have a conversation with someone simultaneously have the advantage. Using Dasher means it’s impossible to tear your eyes away from the screen, even for a moment.

Nonetheless, Dasher shows signs of being an extremely valuable project in future. It will be enormously useful to computer users with disabilities, who cannot always use a standard keyboard.

Anyone who has ever used a pocket computer or handheld PC, and hates having to learn the scribble language used to enter text on one, might also like to keep an eye on Dasher.

How cool would it be to have a Dasher-equipped mobile phone, or better still, a Dasher-powered iPod for making notes or editing contacts on? Dasher’s GUI would seem to me ideally suited for use with the iPod’s unique scrollwheel.

Does Dasher do it for you?

Every now and then you stumble across one of those little apps that makes you smile with delight. Recently, 1001 joined the ranks of them.

When I first got my Flickr account some months ago, I was at a loss to know what to do with it. I already published my photos online on my own web space; I couldn’t see the point of uploading them to Flickr as well.

My cellphone lacks a camera, so I can’t “moblog” like many other happy Flickr users.

And then there’s the hassle factor. I considered it too much effort to have to fire up my browser and upload a new image. I have too many other demands on my time. Browsing images was slow, too; Camino takes a while to initiate the Flash app used to display full-size photos on Flickr pages. I didn’t feel terribly inspired.

But wait — what’s this?

1001 changes all that. It’s so easy to upload new images, and the stream monitor makes tracking incoming pictures waaay too easy.

It makes me smile with delight because it’s full of nice little touches. The application icon in the Dock and in the bezel when you invoke Command-Tab to switch apps) is one of the photos in your incoming photostream. There are keyboard commands for just about every single menu option. New photos appear in a little floating window on the desktop. There’s a built in blog editor (although I haven’t tried that out).

I’m still using my personal web space for posting pictures, but now that 1001 has made the process much easier, I’m going to be Flickring a little more than I used to.

Do you Flickr? 1001 times a day?

Related link: https://www.delicious-monster.com

At the recent O’Reilly Mac OS X Conference, it was announced that Delicious Library had taken top honors in the O’Reilly Mac OS X Innovators Contest. I had the opportunity to spend some time with Delicious Library during its beta phase and I have to say that the application definitely lives up to being “delicious” (oh come on, someone had to say it!). The application has a pretty useful purpose: to help you organize your media collection. Now I know for some people that might not seem like a big deal. You only have a couple dozen DVDs, maybe fifty CDs, some books, oh and there’s that pile of Playstation games… and my old collection of spy paperbacks… see how much stuff you really have? Now imagine if you had a slick-looking app that helped you keep track of all of these items.

Well, that’s tough to turn down, isn’t it? But the real pain comes when you realize you have to somehow enter all of these items into your Mac. But, fear not, for Delicious Monster has added the deal-clincher. Over some sake, I tried to convince Wil Shipley to tell me his secret, but he claims that only a small group of developers have figured out how to hack the webcam driver to make it read barcodes. Yep! That easy. Just hold the back of your DVD/Book/etc up to your webcam and use Delicious Library’s barcode scanner to read in the item’s Universal Product Code.

The app then searches Amazon for the item, picking up cover art, cast and crew information, Amazon user reviews, and ratings. It even picks up suggestions for other titles and gives you a quick link to purchase them through Amazon. Speaking of cover art, Delicious Library has a great interface for keeping track of all of your stuff. It uses a look where your various titles are on a wooden-shelf, cover facing you. You can easily organize the titles by genre, director, and many other bits of metadata. Delicious Library maps the title’s cover art onto a three-dimensional DVD box shape, a hardcover book shape, or a CD jewel case shape. It’s a really great way to show off your collection without the bulk of one of those 300 disc shelving units.

One of the problems that I run into happens when I start lending movies out. I can never remember who borrowed which movie. Sometimes I forget to call and ask for my movies back. The end result usually takes the form of frustration felt over the fact that you can’t show your drunken buddy the Bullitt car chase because you lent the flick to your aunt three weeks ago. Once again, Delicious Monster comes to the rescue. Delicious Library has a Borrowers pane in the interface. You can populate the pane using your Address Book data. Drag an item from your library and drop it on the desired borrower. You are then shown a special shelf, containing the items that individual has borrowed. Select an item and you can choose a date for when it’s due back.

Over in your main library, a little “Out” banner has been placed on the lent title. When the due date has passed for the item, it gets a “Late!” banner. Best of all, Delicious Library sticks a calendar of due dates into iCal, allowing you to set reminders to call Joe about your Gladiator DVD. With great use of Mac OS X core technologies and an absolutely stunning interface, it’s no surprise that Delicious Library won first place in the Innovators Contest. The hard work of the folks over at Delicious Monster is pretty evident.

Today, Delicious Library has been released with a price of about $40. Definitely worth it to me, if it’ll help keep me from having to replace missing DVDs because I keep losing track of them. Delicious Monster definitely has a hot app on their hands and I’m sure a lot of people will be keeping an eye out for their next one!

Had a chance to try this Delicious Monster app yet?

Related link: https://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

Could people working either in tandem or alone alter the results of the election? Does this only affect people that voted on electronic voting machines or does it extend to more traditional paper-based methods? These are questions we all should be asking ourselves.

I’ve been reading Lisa Rein’s personal weblog and she stated that the winners of the election (Republicans this time) did extremely well in e-voting districts. She even provided some Florida election result numbers that she thought would support her case. The only problem was the numbers didn’t appear to support her case. They opposed it.

I sent her the following e-mail as a response to her post:

Lisa, doesn’t [the] chart go against your hypothesis? I thought you said that e-voting had resulted in higher than expected votes going to Bush[?] This is plausible if you assume the e-voting machines have been corrupted which is easy depending on the e-voting machine used (Diebold is trivially easy).

However, if I assume that “E-Touch” machines are e-voting machines that are essentially a black box and “Op-Scan” machines are sheets that are filled out with pen, the numbers seem to counter the claim. Can you please point out what I am not getting?

One of her responses pointed me towards a very interesting article titled “Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked.” It explains that in some cases even the bubble-sheet “Op-Scan” ballots are tabulated by Diebold’s GEMS software which uses a MS Access database on the back-end to store votes and is easily altered without a trace. This is the same software that Diebold uses for their touch-screen voting machines. It’s the same software that has had numerous vulnerabilities identified by Black Box Voting. Which means that Lisa’s original claim still stands.

And that America has some very serious questions that need answers.

Do you have any answers? Or additional questions we should all be asking ourselves?

Related link: https://www.ipodlounge.com/sitenews_comments.php?id=5417_0_2_0_C

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