In our ongoing battle against comment spam at O’Reilly we recently made some changes to the comment filtering system we use on our blogs, which had the unintended consequence of blocking a significant amount of legitimate comments from showing up. So if you’ve recently commented on a blog post here, but haven’t seen your comment go live, that’s why. (We never censor legitimate and appropriate comments).

We’re currently fine-tuning the system, and manually searching for any legitimate mis-categorized comments. We think we’ve found and posted most, if not all, of the missing comments from the past week or two, but if you experience any probems with our blog commenting system please feel free to drop me a note.

US: True Affection by The Blow
The minimal electro-pop duo known as the Blow is made up of Jona Bechtolt and Khaela Maricich. They use their spare arrangements to explore the beats and patterns of the most effective, immediate forms of pop music: be it doo-wop or hip-hop. Our free Single of the Week, “True Affection,” is the sweet closing track on their debut, Paper Television

US: Always Something Better (Trentemøller Remix) [Bonus Track] by Trentemøller
[For, apparently, the second week running…] Copenhagen’s Trentemøller creates dark, minimal house music that is as heavy on thought as it is on creating the bone-shaking polyrhythms. Our Discovery Download track this week is “Always Something Better” - a track which originates somewhere on a cold isolated dance floor, but by the end, has turned into a more organic, cathartic experience.

US: Rob & Big Episode 101
In this reality buddy comedy, professional street skater Rob Dyrdek and his best friend and bodyguard, Christopher “Big Black” Boykin, share a house in the Hollywood Hills, bouncing from one ridiculous moment to the next. Along with their mischievous little Bulldog, “Meaty,” the unlikely trio make the world their playground and hit the streets on a constant quest for adventure and laughs.

Australia: Dress Like Gods by The Inches
[No description.]

Canada: West Van Girl by The Awkward Stage
The Awkward Stage is the name taken by Vancouver’s Shane Nelken. A friend and cohort of the New Pornographers, Nelken has made a name for himself as the go-to man when you need a healthy dose of melody and inspiration. Our free Single of the Week comes from his solo album, Heaven is for Easy Girls, and is a grand, epic piano number that comes across like Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” for the indie rock set. Believe it.

UK: Blue (with Tina Dico) by Euphoria
Euphoria is the brainchild of composer Ken Ramm, who draws his influences from disparate genres, many of which you’ll find on our free Single of the Week, “Blue”. Touches of slide guitar and Eastern percussion fuse with a serene electronic backdrop while Tina Dico’s guest vocals spill out a wandering, searching melody. Mood music for nights with endless possibilities.

France: Marche ou crève by Pierre Guimard
Avec De l’autre côté, Pierre Guimard offre un disque frais, émouvant et endiablé, qui ne cesse de construire des ponts entre la musique anglo-saxonne et une sensibilité à la française pour l’attitude et les textes. Rares sont ceux qui s’y essayent avec tant de bonheur et de légèreté. « Marche ou crève » est notre Single de la semaine sur iTunes.

The iTunes store is all cranky this morning, I keep getting errors when trying to connect to today’s freebies. For your amusement, here’s one of the failure responses I received this AM…

Apple Store’s Refurb iPod Blow-out Continues Get ‘em while they’re still there and cheap. $29 shuffles.

iPod Etiquette Margaret Mason of the Morning News offers basic guidelines for “enjoying your music without sacrificing your manners.”.

Goodbye to the iPod clickwheel? MacNewsWorld reports on a recent Apple Computer patent filing for a touch-sensitive frame that surrounds a display.

Greek Mac Users Demand Dedicated Greek Apple Site Macworld UK reports that Greek Mac users are, um…, revolting: ‘”In an attempt to stimulate the interest of those responsible for the ongoing, unacceptable situation in Greece with regard to Apple products and services, the WeWantAppleGreece website has been created, by Greek Mac users,” the protestors say.’

Viiva la iTV? TechNewsWorld reports that Apple may be using Intel’s Viiv chip to power it’s upcoming iTV. “Intel has not been able to explain effectively what it is and, as a result, the market hasn’t been particularly excited about it on Windows. However, Apple knows how to sell and with a problem where the technology is good but the marketing’s not, Apple has the skills to make a huge contribution.”

Urban Dictionary defines iPod “Everything wrong with western society contained within a small media player” and more.

I promised my friend Armin that I would get his weblog “MacDevCentered”.

He has got a pair of cool AppleScript Plug-Ins that show all emails send to or received from a certain person in your Address Book. I think this is a functionality that should ultimately be part of the Address Book/Mail combo.

Got to this page to get instructions on downloading, installing and using the Plug-Ins.

Those of you who attended the WWDC in past years may know that James Dempsey singlehandedly holds up the fun that used to be part of WWDC before it got all business like and serious in 1998.

The past couple of years he wrote cool songs about technology which he performed at some random WWDC session. (There is a post including a recording of his 2003 hit “MVC” over at the ONJava Blog.) I discovered his latest song and cool music video through ADC on iTunes in the recording of Session 300 - Development Tools State of the Union which I have not been able to attend while in SF. If you have the Leopard Early Starter Kit (which means you are either ADC Select or Premier member) check it out!

I think Dempsey’s songs should be available for the general audience, they are just so hilarious and it sort of illustrates that making Mac software is this fun thing that even might make you some decent money. Apple should bring Dempsey and his “Breakpoints” into a studio, make a proper recording, have his visuals turned into a nice music video and post it to iTunes free for all ADC members including the free online membership.

With all the Woz news about how Apple’s purchase of NeXT was unnecessary, I thought I’d celebrate OS X–an operating system that I, a unapologetic fangirl, find insanely great–by reminding you of the well deserved death of OS 9. Here is your peek at the funeral. WWDC 2002. The Death of Mac OS 9.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been looking for good iTunes-based tools to create music for high-intensity workouts. Over the last year, I’ve tried out several BPM tools without much luck or results. Say hi to Tangerine.

Tangerine is the Potion Factory’s new playlist generation tool that just entered public beta.

It works off several song qualities: beats per minute, beat intensity and personal song ratings. You tell Tangerine what range of BPM and intensities you want to use and how long you want the playlist to last. Tangerine does all the work, and selects a random assortment of songs that meet your criteria. Tangerine generates the BPM and beat intensity levels for your songs automatically. I let it run overnight and unlike tools I’ve tried in the past, it was long finished by the next morning.

Tangerine allows you to select workout patterns. For example, you can ramp up the workout and then cool down, use a series of high-intensity songs mixed with less-intense resting intervals, or just pick a random group of songs with roughly the same characteristics.

After you set your criteria, Tangerine generates a playlist and displays it for your inspection. Use the scroller in the bottom of the window to see the songs (complete with cover-art) and see what Tangerine selected. If you like the results, click Save. Tangerine creates a new playlist in iTunes with a name you specify and you’re ready to run, walk or bike as the mood takes you. I’ve created several playlists with the tool and have been really pleased with the results.

The Tangerine public beta ends at the end of the month and is well worth checking out before then. Other software titles from the Potion Factor retail in the $10 to $30 range, so you can expect the final Tangerine release to come in somewhere around those levels.

Apple is promoting the new .Mac webmail. But, I don’t think it is enough to convince me to spend $100 (or $80 through Amazon) to renew my subscription. So, like others in this blog and elsewhere, I think I will vote with my wallet and leave.. .Mac is a great bundling idea and has some interesting features (including the Backup 3.0 software and Garageband Packs) that I made use of. But, with web hosts offering far more than 1GB storage, IMAP4 email, one-click web application installations, and (sometimes) Webdav for $5 to $10/month ($60 to $120/year), I don’t feel spending another $80 or so for services I rarely use or get more of already from my website hosting services. My other IMAP email services work fine and have webmail interfaces too. I hope Apple rethinks their .Mac offering and comes back with a compelling bundle. I’ll be happy return with credit card in hand if and when that happens.

It could be a stroke of genius: As you can see from the ATI web page, ATI and AMD are now called “The new AMD”.

If they pull this through as far as it can go, there will soon be Macs with both Intel and AMD inside. (In fact there already are, but you know what I mean - it may even be on the spec sheets or the package.)

In the end, did AMD buy ATI maybe just to get into Macs?

Allen Rockwell has just posted about his experiences running the latest version of MS Vista on a MacBook Pro using Parallels over on our Digital Media site, and he sounds pretty impressed. Running Office, FrontPage and Firefox, it looks slick, seems stable and performs well according to Rockwell. The only problem he encountered was getting Vista to recognize his network card, and he explains in detail how he overcame that issue.

Over at MyDreamApp, the contest winners have been announced. First place was taken by an application called Atmosphere, a “near real time weather simulation,” conceived by Cameron Westlake.

Somehow, Atmosphere reminds me of SerenceScreen’s Marine Aquarium: while it has no productivity value whatsoever, it is so plain cool, and its graphics so stunning, that you just got to have it on your Mac, and I’m sure that, if the finished product looks anywhere near as beautiful as the mock-ups, it will be a major success.

As for the contest itself, I wasn’t really sure what to think when it was launched. Bringing together talented programmers looking for The Next Cool Software Idea and people with great ideas, but without sufficient time and/or skills to actually implement the ideas, makes a lot of sense. In the form of a contest, however, it has that feel of a one-off event.

Maybe the fact that this is a one-off event enabled the organizers to garner support from Mac luminaries like David Pogue, Guy Kawasaki, Steve Wozniak, and others, who may not have the time or motivation to support an ongoing exchange of ideas and coding skill. Also, those stunning mock-ups that you can find at the site may only have been possible because there was a limited number of ideas to be “mocked up.”

Still, I would love to see this concept be taken one step further: once Cameron’s Atmosphere app has been implemented, why not maintain as an ongoing process what was now a one-off contest? It would be great to see the MyDreamApp folks morph their website into an online community hub where average Mac users could put their ideas out into the open, and talented graphics/UI designers and Cocoa developers could pick those ideas that — as Eric S. Raymond has put it — “scratch a personal itch,” and turn them into software.

Until that happens, though: congratulations to Cameron and all the other finalists. Can’t wait to create some great Atmosphere on my Mac’s desktop soon!

Sorry for the delay in posting this. I was sick for most of the last week. On the other hand, it’s a total freebiepalooza–I’ve included a lot of new items and a few old ones, all still free–so hopefully it’s worth the wait. And you Australians? SIX freebies this week! Happy 1st iTuniversary. — Erica

US: Apocalypso by Mew
In a music industry where things are too easily compartmentalized, the Danish quartet Mew is able to avoid classification. The group is as ethereal and adrift as Sigur Ros, as compelling and inventive a rock band as Sunny Day Real Estate or Muse, but also contain a grandiosity that is nearly theatrical and yet also melancholy. Check out our free Single of the Week, “Apocalypso,” and decide what for yourself.

US: Always Something Better (Trentemøller Remix) [Bonus Track] by Trentemøller
Copenhagen’s Trentemøller creates dark, minimal house music that is as heavy on thought as it is on creating the bone-shaking polyrhythms. Our Discovery Download track this week is “Always Something Better” - a track which originates somewhere on a cold isolated dance floor, but by the end, has turned into a more organic, cathartic experience.

US: Little G’s Halloween (Short Movie)
The first in a series of Little G’s adventures, this animated Halloween story follows our ghostly preschool hero as he trick or treats for the first time. Little G soon realizes that being a ghost, even on Halloween, can be challenging.

US: The Nine (Pilot)
The Nine is a character-based series that will unravel the mystery of what transpired during a 52-hour hostage situation in chronological flashbacks that open each episode. The heart of the series is how the experience impacted the key characters in their present day lives, as they continue to intertwine, deepen and complicate their connections to one another. Will the characters reinvent themselves after this harrowing ordeal or will they struggle to recover from fateful decisions?

US: Skyland - Dawn of a New Day, Part 1
The year is 2251, and the Earth has been shattered into millions of blocks that now drift aimlessly in orbit around the Earth’s core. This area now known as “Skyland” is governed by the mad dictator, Oslo. His telekinetic or “Seijin” powers have allowed him to seize control of the area’s most precious resource: water.

US: Commercial Parodies from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno
Finally, the very best of late night television comedy is right at your fingertips! Now you can download your favorite The Tonight Show with Jay Leno comedy sketches and watch them over and over again. Relive the laughs with healthy doses of fan favorites such as Ask The Fruitcake Lady, Photobooth, Pumpcast, Dealing With the Public, and of course, Headlines. So whether you missed them the first time, or if you watched and just can’t get enough, look no further!

US: Tenacious D - The Free Preview
The time draws near when the titans of rock give rise to an album destined to occupy its place in the center of the sonic solar system. The album that is tenacious D’s The Pick of Destiny.

US: Breaking Bonaduce/Danny Had an Affair
On the verge of moving out of his home and possibly leaving his wife, Danny realizes that he has a great life…worth keeping…but the small thing that's missing is just so important. Dr. Garry tries to get through to him one last time that Gretchen is not the woman Danny wants her to be. Still unconvinced, Danny has high hopes for his Father's Day present. But true to form, Gretchen botches the romantic element again. After a bout of anger, Danny finally realizes that Gretchen can't speak his language, and he can't ask her to. Will they now live happily ever after?.

US: Bones Season 2 Episode 1
The second season of Bones follows Dr. Temperance Brennan’s discovery about her parents’ real identities, her mother’s murder, and her father’s disappearance. Special Agent Seely Booth has pledged all his FBI muscle and steadfast support to follow the trail of clues, find Brennan’s father, and give Brennan the answers she’s been seeking for 15 years. Brennan and Booth investigate the site of a train wreck where the bodies of a senator and a high-profile businessman are found within the wreckage. The businessman’s body is found in a car on the train tracks, and at first glance, it is an apparent suicide. While investigating a possible connection between the two victims, Brennan and her team discover the businessman is still alive, but severely injured, at a local hospital, and the body at the scene is someone else.

US: Glamour Reel Moments: Dealbreaker
Get short films from glamour’s Reel Moments series. The making of these films - by women and for women - provided direct benefits to FilmAid International. Dealbreaker was written and directed by Gwyneth Paltrow and Mary Wigmore and produced by Moxie Pictures.

US: Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far
Before all new episodes of Battlestar Galactica arrive on October 6th, don’t miss the chance to relive the entire first and second seasons as Sci Fi turns over 30 action-packed hours into one 44-minute adventure. This exclusive special traces mankind’s fight for survival back to Battlestar Galactica’s rebirth as a ground-breaking miniseries, and follows the last of humanity as they struggle to outrun their relentless enemy. Narrated by Mary McDonnell, Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far is an essential look inside the events and people that define life on the edge of extinction. Whether a series fan, or first-time viewer, this special will leave you up-to-date and prepared for the premiere of the third epic season of Battlestar Galactica, October 6th.

US: Noah’s Arc: Tales from the Arc Side
Noah, Alex, Ricky, and Chance are back as Logo brings Season 2 of this daring new series to life. Deception, devotion, and deviation are the name of the game as things get a little shaken up right off the bat. Will new relationships blossom? Will old relationships crumble? Will fresh faces mean big changes? Brace yourself for Noah’s Arc, Season 2…

US: NOPI TunerVision/Firebird International Raceway
NOPI TunerVision features the fast cars, live entertainment, great racing action, and a celebration of the automotive lifestyle of the National Dirt Racers Association (NDRA) Series for the XBOX™ Cup. This exciting show combines footage from the NDRA and allows you to get up-close-and-personal with the world’s best drag racing competitors, along with amazing burnout footage, bikini contests, Jell-O wrestling, foam parties, and night drags.

US: Three Moons over Milford Pilot
It may be cancelled, but it’s still free. What would you do if the world were coming to an end? In this series set in the small town of Milford, the residents deal with the effects of a cosmic explosion that threatens Earth’s existence. Living under three moons, the townspeople take life to the extreme, as if any day could be their last, and the Davis family is no exception.

US: Best of Ghost Hunters, Volume 1
Jason and Grant are back for an all-new season of unpredictable adventures. Whether it’s a poltergeist in your pantry or a leaky pipe in your basement, these plumbers by day, paranormal detectives by night are up to the task. As they gear up and ready to get to the bottom of another season of spine-tingling cases, you can catch up on some of their past exploits with episode downloads from iTunes. Watch as these two intrepid investigators jump headfirst into some of the most perplexing situations, with results that vary from the outrageous to the unexplainable.

US: Andy Milonakis Show, Episode 201
The Andy Milonakis Show is an absurdist comedy centered on Andy Milonakis, a young boy stuck at home in his apartment in New York’s Lower East Side. The program is comprised of strange short films that Andy makes starring himself, his dog, his neighbors, strangers, inanimate objects and the occasional celebrity. And the comedian does it all, he raps, he sings, he dances.

Australia: Only a Rake by Holly Throsby
Take the atmosphere from late nights spent outside, mix in some shuffling folk sounds that creak like an antique rocking chair, add in the fragile, slightly off-kilter timbre of Holly Throsby’s breathy voice and you’ve got the whimsical, introspective folk sounds of “Only a Rake”.

Australia: Getting Better by Celebrity Drug Disasters
Celebrity Drug Disasters is not the name of the newest entry into the reality television game (not yet anyway), but instead they are Sydney’s latest entry into the disco-electro-punk sweepstakes. The songs are riddled with synths, but driven by basic riffs and the heated exchange of male and female vocals. Check out the song “Getting Better” - it’s free today on iTunes.

Australia: I've Been Loving You Too Long by The Hiptones
A generous serving of soul, funk, and blues is next up on our mammoth anniversary giveaway. “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” has been spinning in clubs as a remix for the past three weeks. The album Right Now is coming up next week and defines the word “eclectic”. Look out for it on iTunes and, to whet your appetite, enjoy the original version of the twangy, reverb-drenched “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”

Australia: Ladies and Gentlemen (Radio Edit) by Tyree featuring Kardinal Offishal & Deach
Tyree lets it be known that he’s the New Zealand MC most likely to take party style hip-hop to the bank. His rhythmic, fast-paced delivery show that he can walk with the big boys, which is no surprise seeing how well he fared in his recent collaboration with Chamillionaire. “Ladies and Gentlemen” is taken from Tyree’s debut, Now or Never and is free today on iTunes.

Australia: Christian Girl by The Follow
The Follow have risen from the underbelly of the Sydney goth/punk live scene, where their live show has developed into a frenzied, all-embracing, powerfully raw, and emotive adventure. Our free track, “Christian Girl,” is a bold tune that draws its simplicity from a simple primal blues idea, but finds a profound new way of expressing the emotion. Feel the need for some catharsis? Take a listen.

Australia: The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
This Uplifiting 1996 bestseller from Bruce Courtenay is here narrated by Humphrey Bower. The story chronicles a young English boy’s experience at a volatile boarding school in South Africa.

Canada: Harvest (Within You) by Clinic
For those new to the Clinic brigade, the Liverpool group excel at creating unnerving melodies steeped in paranoia. For this track from their newest album, Visitations, vocalist Ade Blackburn seems to be gritting his teeth while he sings, letting the words escape like air. The band, however, are churning out some voodoo art rock while a wheezing organ spits out some haunted house-style atmospherics. A very special Single of the Week, we’d like to say.

Canada: Time Fixers by Tenacious D
The time draws near when the titans of rock give rise to an album destined to occupy its place in the center of the sonic solar system. The album that is tenacious D’s The Pick of Destiny.

UK: Wake Up Scarlett by Duke Special
With his dreadlocks completely askew and his eye makeup a bit smeared, you might mistake Duke Special for an angst-ridden goth/emo hybrid. Truth is, this Dublin native has a romantically rich voice, which he tends to wrap around old, wheezing instruments and household items in order to create a ramshackle vision of contemporary pop, kitchen sink possibly included.

France: Shadows by Honeycut
« Shadows », par Honeycut, c’est ce qui se passe quand on prend l’un des chanteurs les plus en vogue et les plus talentueux de San Francisco et qu’on le place devant deux personnes qui comprennent et apprécient le meilleur de Motown, du disco-pop et de Stereolab. Ce morceau du premier album de Honeycut est une petite chanson pop bien agréable, bien rythmée, et qui devrait faire un malheur dans les clubs, et c’est notre Single de la semaine sur iTunes.

Now, this is something very cool: ADC on iTunes. Apple finally decided to do something about the lame ADC TV, a service for ADC members to watch training videos. They moved it to iTunes where you can download the movies and watch them at your convenience. The first ADC on iTunes movies (Leopard Sessions from WWDC) are part of the new Leopard Early Start Kit.

Like many others these days, I’m somewhat fanatical about the hit TV show Lost, and I thought it was pretty nice of ABC to offer the episodes for free on their website once they’ve already aired — all except for one little problem: the screen is a bit too small.

Well, that was until I realized that I could use the Universal Access zoom feature to transform that tiny little screen into a display that almost completely fills my 17″ monitor. Surprisingly, the image quality isn’t bad at all (at least compared to what I get with my rabbit-ears antenna), so try it out and save your eyes next time you decide to watch episodes online, catch the latest on YouTube, or need to view anything else that’s served up in a small screen.

And if you’re interested in reading a quick primer on how OS X’s display system makes this sort of thing possible, an article that I wrote a while back entitled What Is Quartz (or Why Can’t Windows Do That) touches on a few of these details and explains how they’re more or less freebies that resulted from Quartz being designed so darn well.

So, what’s in the new Camino beta?

The answer is, some long-awaited stuff. Several of the features now appearing in this beta are ones that I am very pleased to see and will get a lot of use from.

Among them:

• spellchecking in text fields
• better RSS handling
• access Bookmark Bar bookmarks using Command+1, Command+2, etc
• force links that would normally open in new windows to open in new tabs (aka Single Window Mode)

Google provides a bunch of topic specific search pages. One of them is google.com/mac which like most Google main pages was simple and and presented a single search text box… until now. If you head there now, you’ll find that it also provides download links to the six current Google products for Mac OS X.

You can also find the relative new Official Google Mac Blog and brand new Google Groups: Macs Inside Google where you can read about what Google Mac group is up to and interact with them (respectively).

At least the first short from the new movie store. The TV store offered “Covert” free a few weeks back.

US: Glamour Reel Moments: Dealbreaker
Get short films from glamour’s Reel Moments series. The making of these films - by women and for women - provided direct benefits to FilmAid International. Dealbreaker was written and directed by Gwyneth Paltrow and Mary Wigmore and produced by Moxie Pictures.

US: New Shoes by Paolo Nutini
Paolo Nutini comes from an Italian family - but one that has lived in Scotland for generations. He’s fresh from his teenage years and he’s got a voice that channels Ray Charles, Bill Withers, Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Chris Martin, and well, whomever you happen to like. Let’s just say he’s got an amazing voice. “New Shoes” is an uptempo, ridiculously catchy folk-pop track that we’ll also call Single of the Week.

US: Kiss Me by Robbie Williams
“Kiss Me” was originally a pop hit for Tin Tin in 1985. Tin Tin was actually the work of Stephen Duffy, who was one of the founding members of Duran Duran. Duffy then formed the group the Lilac Time, who created a few albums of Nick Drake-inspired folk pop. Currently, Duffy has been co-writing songs with Robbie Williams, no doubt inspiring this choice cover taken from Williams’ newest album, Rudebox. Get the track now on iTunes, consider it a free preview of Robbie Williams’ new album and a pop history lesson all in one.

US: Tenacious D - The Free Preview
The time draws near when the titans of rock give rise to an album destined to occupy its place in the center of the sonic solar system. The album that is tenacious D’s The Pick of Destiny.

US: Breaking Bonaduce/Danny Had an Affair
[Make sure to check your price on this. It keeps going between Free and $1.99.] On the verge of moving out of his home and possibly leaving his wife, Danny realizes that he has a great life…worth keeping…but the small thing that's missing is just so important. Dr. Garry tries to get through to him one last time that Gretchen is not the woman Danny wants her to be. Still unconvinced, Danny has high hopes for his Father's Day present. But true to form, Gretchen botches the romantic element again. After a bout of anger, Danny finally realizes that Gretchen can't speak his language, and he can't ask her to. Will they now live happily ever after?.

Australia: Pressure Pressure by Mink
With all of the mention of bombs, grenades, and guns on Mink’s incendiary track, “Pressure Pressure”, the group tap into a primal fear - explosions. The track itself is full of all sorts of tension, and the listener is hardly given a reprieve when the chorus comes. It’s a hard rock chestnut charged with punk rock energy. It’s also our Single of the Week.

Canada: Boy Soprano by Xiu Xiu
The Bay Area experimental indie rock outfit known as Xiu Xiu (pronounced “shoo shoo”) are led by Jamie Stewart. It’s Stewart who pens all of the lyrics and melodies that run underneath this group’s often cacophonous, yet sweetly melancholic songs. Informed by punk, avant-electronics, random noise, and post-punk, Xiu Xiu are one of the most compelling and fascinating groups around. The track “Boy Soprano” from the recent album, The Air Force is our free Single of the Week.

UK: Dig a Hole by The Ailerons
The Ailerons are the new outfit featuring Blur’s Dave Rowntree. He again steps behind the drum kit on his new outing, but it’s the jangling immediacy of “Dig A Hole” that hits you directly. Singer Charity Hair is the other main draw with her assured, forthright vocal style while the band works out a backing track that’s one part acoustic sing-along and two parts mid-’90s indie freak-out.

France: Earth Body Air by Supersystem
On ne pourra pas dire qu’on sait vraiment ce qui s’est passé dans la tête de Supersystem sur ce titre, mais en tout cas, on adore. On va dire que le groupe aime autant le punk rock et l’électro… Un splendide mélange de beats façonnés et découpés au millimètre, de synthés bien lourds et de paroles sautillantes et… étonnantes. Nous sommes fiers d’en faire notre Single gratuit de la semaine sur iTunes.

Homes and other buildings shake violently not once but twice minutes apart on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning. Electricity is cut off 10 minutes later. The cell phone shows it has a signal from the cell tower but can’t dial out for a voice call or get an EDGE data connection. The apparently lone surviving radio station plays a pre-recorded political panel discussion. No live human is on the air. The wireline phone still works but terminates to an all circuits busy message. Overhead, gray clouds roll over the valley.

An episode CBS’ Jericho TV show? No, this was Hawaii between 7:07am and 8am on October 15. Since my part of the world was safe and sound after the rocking and rolling, it seemed like a good time to take stock of the tech available to me, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and use what works to get by until things returned to normal (more or less). Here’s what I found… I use a familiar A to F grading system.

Law marketing consultant Larry Bodine had some problems with his new Mac. Now, some of his complaints sound pretty serious and I don’t blame him for wanting to deal with them.

But Larry, there’s a few things you mention that I thought maybe I could help you with.

Word files transferred from the Mac were missing pictures. PowerPoint files transferred from the Mac would lose their formatting. PCs and Macs are not compatible, regardless of what they say.

I don’t think that’s -

Doing a simple screen capture was an immense chore. On a PC you just press Alt and tap PrtScr. With the Mac I had to download and launch special programs to accomplish this simple task.

Ah, no, see there’s a useful little -

I didn’t even bother with the Mac’s iCal or Mail, which required me to buy an @mac.com address.

Um, Larry -

Instead, I went straight to Outlook for Mac. A lot of the software for Mac — such as AOL for Mac OS X — was dumbed down and missing may features of the current PC versions.

Larry?

For me the killer was the Web browser. Safari simply cannot read Flash. It is, quite simply, a second-rate browser.

Larry? Hello?

I don’t think he can hear me.

On the suggestions of friends, I downloaded Netscape and Firefox, which were no better.

Larrrrry??

I run several Web sites, all optimized for IE 5.5 or higher. I couldn’t operate my own Web sites with the Mac.

You know what? Never mind.

Wish me luck on selling the Mac.

That’s probably an excellent idea. Good luck, Larry.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat, I highly recommend you take a look at it. I personally consider it to be in the top 10-15 books I’ve ever read, and it has really changed the way I think and my perceptions about the world around me.

The World Is Flat is essentially a look at how various “flatteners” such as supply chain management, electronic commerce, open source software, the internet, and various other technological advances in the past 20 or so years have really flattened the global economic playing field and drastically altered the dynamics of how business and life get done these days. Even more exciting are the insights about the “untouchable” jobs in the future, commentary on topics that are still in the pipeline, and the opportunities that lie ahead. If you have concerns about a book laden with more politics than you want to read (perhaps like The Lexus and the Olive Tree), I think you’ll find this one to be much more enjoyable and easy to digest.

About a year and a half ago, Tritton Tech announced they’d deliver Mac Mini support for their See2 USB-SVGA adapter ready by, oh say, July 2005. The See2 allows users to add an extra monitor through a USB port without having to add a monitor card–very convenient if you own a mini or laptop.

I gave them a call this morning to see where things were at. The Tritton rep I talked to said that Macintosh support was proving much harder than they expected, primarily because of Apple’s complete indifference to their needs and total lack of support. (Edited to note: This is a summary of what I was told. This is not my personal editorial opinion about Apple. ) So when will the Mac See2 driver be ready? “Not any time soon,” I was told. “Maybe another year out. If we get lucky.” He added that you could use a See2 unit today on the Mac Mini, so long as you were willing to boot into Windows.

iPod Flashmob at UK Train Station Hundreds gathered to dance in silence proving once and for all that iPods really are social devices.

One commuter said: “It was entertaining if strange to see all these people gyrating to their own beat. It was the Soul Train arriving at platform one.”

Kid-Friendly iPod Case Announced The nice wide handles make it far easier for your 2-year-old to violently throw your $300 iPod to the ground.

Apple Employee risks job, soul, to blog. So far all he does is insist that he’s for real. It’s kind of like a less interesting Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, but with a tie and a nondisclosure agreement.

iPod nano RED fights AIDs Each nano sold provides $10 to the Global Fund. Also consider donating to less well-known “orphan disease” funds.

And yet another video that tickled my fancy:

I’m currently attending the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Here are my thoughts so far…

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First, in case you are wondering what is Office 2.0, I’ll borrow a bit from their website:

“Imagine a computer that never crashes, or gets infected by a virus. Imagine a computer onto which you never have to install any application. Imagine a computer that follows you wherever you go, be it at school, at work, abroad, or back home. This computer does not exist today, but it will in the future, and this future might be much closer than you think.”

You can likely trace the original idea of this back to Larry Ellison’s 1996 pitch for the Network Computer. In case you weren’t working in tech then, the idea was that all data, whether documents or applications, resided on a server, and all computers were mainly gateways to that data. Terminals had minimal hardware and no actual software. There was a definite cost advantage to this and from an IT standpoint, a brilliant way to manage upgrades. Seems like a pretty good idea, but it failed to catch on.

And really, whoever thought that you’d store applications and files anywhere else than on your local hard drive?

That’s absurd.

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Flash Forward

We’re doing just that.

Data doesn’t care where it is stored and applications no longer need to be PC-centric. The tubes of the Internets have made it possible to literally run applications in browser windows, and we’re seeing a whole new emergence of online services built out to mimic software, with true drag and drop support and even links to external hardware.

The browser is no longer just for browsing.

So a slight correction I’ll make to the Office 2.0 intro above is that you should NOT imagine a computer that doesn’t crash…imagining a computer misses the point of Office 2.0 which is more about synchronization, collaboration, and managing workflow. In Office 2.0, what it means to be “online” is the new challenge we face. I think a lot of Office 2.0 companies are missing this point. They are rapidly creating online applications that without “connectivity” are useless. There is all this talk about web apps…but without the network (which still feels like it was slapped together with twine and duct tape), what’s the point? I’m not hearing enough here about connectivity…which makes me wonder…why aren’t there more telecom people here as speakers or on panels?

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The Online Office Suite

In one of Wednesdays sessions entitled, “One Day in the Life of an Office 2.0 Worker,” we were treated to a variety of demonstrations on how to bring your current desktop-based office suite of applications to a web-based suite of applications. To me this fundamentally misses many of the issues that I and others like me have with online applications. There are currently too many solutions and a lack of cohesion between them. Everyone seems to piecemeal twelve different online solutions to make one thing work. It is maddening.

In addition to this it seems that everyone is trying to recreate every single desktop app into an online app, and quite frankly, that simply doesn’t make sense. Certain tasks will never run better over the web than locally on a computer.

If there is a bubble to the Web 2.0 economy, it is this. It reminds me of the last internet boom when just because some companies were seeing success selling products online, companies all of a sudden decided they could sell 50lbs. bags of dog food online at a loss. Let’s not go overboard here.

We’re creating more and more applications that require more and more CPU cycles, more RAM, more storage. What we haven’t done enough of is creating seamless connectivity. We’re easily behind almost every Asian country…I can’t even get a decent cell phone signal in my neighborhood and I live in the bastion of high tech, San Francisco.

Can you hear me now?

It is all about the network, stupid!

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What Office 2.0 Needs

The challenge with Office 2.0 in my mind really comes down to several things.

1. Whether cell phones, wi-fi devices, or computers, easy access to the same data is a major milestone we need to fix. My cell phone cannot view the same data as my Pocket PC, and my Pocket PC cannot view the same data as my laptop. How we get to our data is every bit as important as the data itself.

2. Why can’t I get a seamless link between my business/personal contacts and my cell phone/Computer/web service? Synching should never be a decision. Changes should occur across all my devices and services as they happen, and not require human interaction. Why do we have Caller ID, but our phones don’t utilize it to create automatic Address Books? I want my gear to program itself. All I want to do is approve what goes in and what gets deleted.

3. Online storage is silly. A whole gigabyte of free storage. WaHooooo! I’ve got 1Terabyte at home and 2GB of files I regularly access on my laptop. The idea of paying monthly fees for online storage I can get for less in a physical drive, doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think this issue is not one of value-added storage as a business model (which I still find crazy), but one of connectivity. Online storage is less important to me than access to the storage I already have. Solve the connection issue and not the storage issue.

4. Speed is certainly a problem. We’ve grown accustom to clicking a button and an instant action occurs. There is often a delay between what you want a web app to do and when it actually happens. There are currently too many variables that affect this, including who makes the device, who provides the connection, and so on.

5. Reliability. My laptop is certainly more reliable in many respects to a web service. Getting to your data is reliant on your device manufacturer, the network you are on, numerous providers along the way, the company holding the data, and their providers. If any aspect of that link fails, you are without your mission critical data. As we saw in a demo today (Gmail was temporarily down), that result can be a big fat goose egg. If you are doing a presentation on the benefits of Office 2.0, rather embarrassing.

6. Who do you trust with your data? I’m sorry but having my entire business and personal life one subpoena away from whoever wants to look at it is a bit scary. These companies and my data are also privy to disgruntled employees and hackers.

7. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. I think there are a lot of companies recreating applications that simply work better as a local application than as a web app. Look to the past to see when a “good idea” is not necessarily a good idea.

8. Migration. If I trust a service and put my data on it and I’m not happy with it, it is often very difficult to migrate that data to a new service.

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If Wishes Were Horses…

My hope for Office 2.0 really comes down more to collaboration/connectivity and less reinventing applications for the web. Mike Cannon-Brookes from Atlassian had a good comment during the Managing Blogs & Wikis in the Enterprise session yesterday. He mentioned that we will not likely see people using online office suites to work in Office 2.0 (contrary to what most online office suites will have you believe), but instead our existing localized applications, like Word, will simply become the gateway to Office 2.0. I think he’s right.

People want to work on what they are comfortable using. Some people use Word, some text editors, me…I use an email client. The key is not building a web app to replace what I love…but enabling what I love to connect to Office 2.0.

Rafe Needleman shares my pain:

“Me, although I write about Web-based applications all the time, I confess that I’m probably at Office 1.25. I still use Microsoft Word and Outlook, and I store all my files on my local hard disk. I use Web tools for collaboration, and I am eager to move to Office 2.0 apps, but it’s hard to break my old habits.”

Again…I think Office 2.0 is more about connectivity/collaboration/synchronization than online “applications.”

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Finally

One of the most astute observations came from Esther Dyson during her keynote. She referred to wikis (and I feel it applies to the world of Office 2.0) as there were a lot of nouns but no verbs…essentially that while a great knowledge base (or cloud) exits, there is not a lot of automated action occurring based on that information. What good is information if it just sits there?

I’d like to amend what she said a bit to the whole Office 2.0 environment and state that there are an awful lot of words, but not enough language. We’ve got a lot of tools, but we need to tie them together.

Office 2.0 has a lot of promise, and many of the ideas here at this conference are wonderful. However, until we work out the entire connectivity and collaborative aspect, like the Network Computer, it seems like a good idea going nowhere.

Writing Getting into your head for the Chicago Tribune, Jon Van says that IBM is working on technology that will allow your cell phone to know where you are and for other technology to respond intelligently according to your location. He writes:

“The system will combine knowledge about where someone’s phone is with his calendar schedule, sending incoming calls to voice mail when he’s in a conference. Eventually, the system may turn up his home heating system 10 minutes before he arrives.”

If you’d like to dabble with this idea now, albeit in a form that’s “limited” to your own home, it’s easily accomplished with a Mac and some home automation software.

In Smart Home Hacks, Hack #54 and #57 describe two ways of having your home lights turned up. and your home stereo switched on, before you arrive home from work. The first one is written by Michael Furguson, author of XTension, and describes how to use driveway sensors that are a lot simpler than you’d think. In the second hack I describe how I integrated the HomeLink transmitter in my Nissan with both my garage door and home automation setup.

Hack #35 tells you how to have your computer automatically forward your home phone to a different number based upon your schedule. In the book it’s written for PC users by Jon Welfringer, but the concept of using a little scripting and dialing numbers with a modem, in order to set your phone company’s forwarding options, is easily portable to a Mac.

And starting on page 257 (Hack #70) is a technique for knowing who is at home, and having your house respond accordingly. I use this one myself; my alarm clock doesn’t go off on holiday or weekends–or at all if I’m traveling–thanks to my home automation system knowing whether or not I’m present.

Finally, don’t forget about the Salling Clicker. If you’ve got a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, not only can you remotely control your computer, your computer can know when you’re within 30 feet and automatically get busy before you sit down.

All these projects are great fun, and you’ll be ready for the future that the Trib article describes, whenever it finally gets here.

When I first heard the news that Eudora as we know it was going to be replaced by a free, open source version based on Mozilla Thunderbird, I felt a twinge of sadness.

Although I don’t use it anymore, I spent many years using Eudora on Windows and Mac operating systems, and always considered it one of the finest email tools around. And that was until very recently.

Yes, the OS X version of Eudora looked like something fossilized from a previous era. But it worked. And it worked so much faster than almost anything else around. Nothing was as good at searching through huge mailboxes. Nothing offered the same degree of tweak-tastic flexibility.

The thing is, Qualcomm was working on a Cocoa version of Eudora. At least, that’s what they told me. In May this year I got in touch to ask them about it outright - I’d heard the rumors and I wanted to see if they were true.

This was the reply I got back:

Due to a variety of factors, the Cocoa version is taking far longer
than we’d planned.

We do not yet have a date for the Cocoa release but the plan will
incorporate the new features of SpotLight,