Aug 2006
Apple, Arrogant?
Thursday 31 August 2006 Filed in: Apple
I admit I'm a big fan of Apple. I'm also going to Paris for Apple Expo the week after next, so I was suprised to hear murmurings that Apple is to launch a Movie Store on 12th Sept, but in a media event of their own. Not at Apple Expo Paris (which starts the same day). Firstly, I don't normally believe rumours (particularly this one) but should these rumours be correct (a supposedly Official announcement being sent to YourMacLife) it represents breathtaking arrogance on the part of Apple. Or a strictly American Movie Store for the time being. I can think of absolutely no reason why Apple would spurn a major (at least in Europe) Mac Event unless their presentation was so completely irrelevant to the gathered press in Paris. Apple loves manipulating the media, and I've no doubt that should Apple ignore Porte de Versailles like this (particularly after they so publicly announced that there would be no Stevenote this year) that more than a few people will be pissed off (myself included) and could backfire on Apple's PR efforts. Either way, the store's got Wal-Mart's knickers in a twist, so enjoy the read here.
We'll see what comes about in the next 10 days or so. In the mean time, I've away on holiday again from tomorrow (to Sweden) so I'm sure I'll think of plenty to post before I return on Monday!
We'll see what comes about in the next 10 days or so. In the mean time, I've away on holiday again from tomorrow (to Sweden) so I'm sure I'll think of plenty to post before I return on Monday!
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Mozart 40 - On the Streets..
Thursday 31 August 2006 Filed in: Amusing Forwards
Flickr GeoTagging is HUGE!
Wednesday 30 August 2006
In the first 24 hours of Flickr Geotagging, there's apparently been over 1.2 million geotagged photos. Wow. And 9 hours later there were 1.6 million geotagged photos. That's simply awesome. Go over to FlickrBlog (always a good read) to read more. Shame I can't upload at the moment. None of the upload tools are working. That's right, none. And I have 750 photos I want to upload! :-|
Check out my Flickr map!
Check out my Flickr map!
Flickr GeoTagging is great!
Tuesday 29 August 2006 Filed in: Technology
My liking (or love) of Flickr is almost as well known as Seb's somewhat less enthusiastic thoughts about it. However one thing I really like now is the inclusion of GeoTagging. However, the one thing thing that sets it apart is that there is no more Long/Lat pallarva. Simply search:
Click on the correct result (in this case Manchester, England, UK) and the map will then take you there.
In the example above, I've already added photos - Apple Stores in Manchester. Now, drag any photo (or multiple selection of photos onto the map:
And Flickr will place them on the map, and the Additional Information will show up some more info (with some cool AJAX-y map stuff too).:
What are the dowsides to this? Well the map data is particularly inaccurate (probably out of privacy concerns) so placing any city centre landmarks is pretty near impossible. Overall though, it's a far more user friendly setup than the Zooomr one - and no numbers or such like - an intelligible location. I had my doubts that Flickr would not be as dynamic as it's smaller rivals (purely as the amount of servers that would be needed would be many times greater for Flickr and thus any major migration surely would be harder) but given this new, exciting (if not entirely necessary in my experience) feature and Zooomr's lack of uploaders (yes, they're coming, but so's Christmas) means that Flickr is now continuing to innovate and means I'm not likely to move my loyalties elsewhere.
OK - I acknowledge that Flickr's features are not new unique features, but bringing it to my Flickr collection and the way it's done is worthy of merit IMHO.
How much for.....
Tuesday 29 August 2006 Filed in: Personal
a McDonalds meal in Turkey? For 6 Chicken McShuggets, Regular Drink and Fries (known everywhere except Turkey as the Extra Value Meal)? Well we discovered at 2.30am this morning - starving after having queued for just about everything - Check-In, Entering the Airport (they scan luggage when you enter the terminal) and food. A mind blowing £8 per meal! The worst bit is that both Don (my brother!) and I had one each. It sure ought to have tasted like the nicest McDonalds ever... but we all know there's no such thing ;-) I do wonder whether they 'got' the idea of FastFood in Turkey - but they're no-where near as inept at serving Fast Food as the French (in my experience) although I'm praying it's quicker when I'm in Paris in a fortnight's time.
Back!
Tuesday 29 August 2006 Filed in: Personal
Well after a weeks glorious sunshine and a lot of doing precisely nothing, I'm back in the U.K. We were unaffected by the bombs in Turkey (we were about to leave as we heard about them - but my thoughts go to all those affected by the attacks), and I'm glad to see that people are still going to Turkey - it's a great place, and I loved the country. I've only got a few photos to show for the week (but that's more than I managed last year!) and will put them online. So I've been gone, and what's happened? Well I thought I would have to exchange the iBook batteries due to the spontaneous combustion problem the Sony-made batteries have a habit of doing. But neither of my batteries is deemed a fire hazard. Phew! But what a greeting I was given by the RSS reader this morning:
Ouch! I also have a rant specially set up to blog about Vodafone, who have in the last week marked GMail Mobile as 'Suitable for 18+' and so blocked it on my phone. Bastards. Especially seeing as I have to prove my age by paying a £1 fee (with a Credit Card that I don't have). Sure they give me £2.50 airtime in reward for this, but can I frankly be arsed? Probably not. I'lll just send a howler through pigeon post to Vodafone and see what that does.
Off on Holiday!
Sunday 20 August 2006 Filed in: Personal
It's that time of the year where I drop the iBook (not literally ;-) ) and jet off to somewhere exciting. This year the family's going to Turkey (not quite as hot as Egypt last summer then!). The front page of NikFletcher.com is now set to tell that to everyone who visits, although there's a number of ways to get past it and get to the content which remains online :-) I'll likely have a lot of Flickr-ing to do on my return, not to mention any email that arrives (that is something I'm dreading), so if I don't get back to you around the end of the month, politely prompt me again ;-) Email is set to autorespond from Monday as that's when I'm off, but as I'm in the middle of packing, updating the site is one thing that I could do without. Here's the official notice:
One more thing
Friday 18 August 2006 Filed in: Life
I regularly upload the blog only to realise I did mean to mention just one other thing. Recently, you may have noticed I've put useful links at the bottom of the page, along with a 'Back to Top' command. Nifty I know - infact, I've even put the reverse in just to show you the links. Cool huh?! To see the links click here and save yourself the scrolling! ;-)
ROTFLMAO
Thursday 17 August 2006 Filed in: Apple
Fake Steve Jobs is at it again. The posts continue to be absolutely hilarious and if you've not got Fake Steve in your RSS reader, I'd recommend you do so now otherwise you are seriously missing out!
Updated!
Thursday 17 August 2006 Filed in: Website
I've been busy with the site recently. A totally new Photos page, along with a few background changes (mainly for the benefit of Google & co's indexing) and a few new photo slideshows are the new bits and bobs on the site. I've got another 400 or so photos going online in the next month or so (plus any I take in the mean time). Enjoy!
Who will finish first? Wembley, Vista or Leopard
Thursday 10 August 2006 Filed in: Technology
I've been pondering this post for a little while. Last week I travelled to London last week to help get CocoaDevHouseLondon going, and noticed in The Daily Telegraph that the new Wembley is running even later than anyone thought. Given the next few hours were spent chatting Mac, OS X, Vista (bashing) and more, I asked myself the question: Which will be finished first? Vista or Wembley. Since then, the question has expanded to Which will be finished first? Leopard, Vista or Wembley. Now that IS a tough question. My gut instinct is in this order:
For the purposes of this post, 'Finished' means a statement that everything is operating and fully functional, not the date of any statement that says when the project will be finished!
- Leopard
- Vista
- Wembley
For the purposes of this post, 'Finished' means a statement that everything is operating and fully functional, not the date of any statement that says when the project will be finished!
Shameless Plug: Northern Bytes Episode 10 Out Now!
Thursday 10 August 2006
The latest episode of Northern Bytes is now out, and in this new episode we're talking to John McLaughlin (Loghound Software) and Isaiah Carew (YourHead Software) about their RapidWeaver plugins. Go get it here!
YouTube Find
Wednesday 09 August 2006 Filed in: Amusing Forwards
This incredible video is just amazing. I have no idea how long it must have take these guys to make this video, but it's just left me thinking WOW!
Check it out here.
Check it out here.
Google AdSenseLess*
Tuesday 08 August 2006 Filed in: Technology
I'm looking at the conversation, and I just find it incredible that a talk about web technologies brings up the ad. Perhaps it's a cue we're spending too long at our keyboards and ought to make sure they're hygeinic..... Weird
* A brief acknowledgement that Google AdSense is a trademark of Google Inc. And that this post should not be the basis of a lawsuit!
After the Keynote
Tuesday 08 August 2006 Filed in: Apple
Lots of interesting things that are better summarised elsewhere, so I'll just give a brief update as to what I got right. Not a lot really, but given that there's a few things yet to be announced, there's hope that I could still be right. I'm really looking forward to XCode 3.0 and Dashcode - some sweet coding options there. Got the Mac Pros right (although not exactly a rocket science prediction) and the stuff such as Time Machine look amazing - better than what I thought would come. As for iChat? Well we've got 'Multiple Logins', although no exact details were announced in the keynote (FWIW Microsoft immediately afterwards announced that Mac Messenger 6.0 will be out later this year). The Cinema Displays were reduced (30" display for £1549 is amazing value really), and xServes were updated to Intel too (Leopard Server looks pretty sweet too with WikiServer and PodcastServer!).
I'm very excited about Leopard, so go have a look at it!
There's a hilarious John Hodgeman Get a Mac-inspired intro to the stream of the entire Keynote, so watch the entire Keynote and relive the funny introduction here!
I'm very excited about Leopard, so go have a look at it!
There's a hilarious John Hodgeman Get a Mac-inspired intro to the stream of the entire Keynote, so watch the entire Keynote and relive the funny introduction here!
Leopard Predictions
Friday 04 August 2006 Filed in: Apple
On Tuesday, I listed my predictions for WWDC Keynote. What would I like in Leopard though? Well...
- No more brushed metal!
- QuickSilver as part of Leopard. OK, a little far fetched perhaps, but Spotlight that is faster than an asthmatic tortoise would be a start. I don't keep many programmes in my dock, and used to use Spotlight, but it's just not quick enough. How long should it take to find Safari and Firefox when it comes to testing sites?!
- MSN & Yahoo in iChat (obviously sans Brushed Metal).
- iCal / Address Book / iChat finally merged.
- FindR improvements and re-writes.
- iSync with more options such as FTP
- More speed on PPCs too!
- and PLEASE a version of Safari that has all the AJAX capabilities of Mozilla and more. Safari's fast, but only on a few sites (of which GMail isn't one as it's not supportive of gChat in the browser). This would be my MAJOR complaint about Tiger, so here's to hoping it gets fixed!
There's more, but I can't really remember them all... I'll add them into the comments if I get a chance!
- No more brushed metal!
- QuickSilver as part of Leopard. OK, a little far fetched perhaps, but Spotlight that is faster than an asthmatic tortoise would be a start. I don't keep many programmes in my dock, and used to use Spotlight, but it's just not quick enough. How long should it take to find Safari and Firefox when it comes to testing sites?!
- MSN & Yahoo in iChat (obviously sans Brushed Metal).
- iCal / Address Book / iChat finally merged.
- FindR improvements and re-writes.
- iSync with more options such as FTP
- More speed on PPCs too!
- and PLEASE a version of Safari that has all the AJAX capabilities of Mozilla and more. Safari's fast, but only on a few sites (of which GMail isn't one as it's not supportive of gChat in the browser). This would be my MAJOR complaint about Tiger, so here's to hoping it gets fixed!
There's more, but I can't really remember them all... I'll add them into the comments if I get a chance!
'Who IS behind Steve Jobs' Secret Diary?' asks Forbes
Thursday 03 August 2006 Filed in: Amusing Forwards
According to Forbes, the 'Secret Diary of Steve Jobs' has got Silicone Valley in an uproar. And perhaps quite rightly. It's a very, very clever and highly amusing diary that seems to come out with more and more great entries. So many entries in fact that Forbes writer Rich Karlgaard is asking 'Who IS the Secret Steve Jobs'. Head on over and places your guesses....!
Perhaps come WWDC's Keynote all will be (or have been) revealed!
Digg The Forbes Story
In other Apple news, it appears that Apple's OS X Leopard logo has been snapped in the Moscone Center. I like the look of it, so let's hope there's more to it than just the glamourous logo!
Perhaps come WWDC's Keynote all will be (or have been) revealed!
Digg The Forbes Story
In other Apple news, it appears that Apple's OS X Leopard logo has been snapped in the Moscone Center. I like the look of it, so let's hope there's more to it than just the glamourous logo!
2 Million Downloads a Day.... of REAL PLAYER?!
Thursday 03 August 2006 Filed in: Technology
My love, or rather lack of it, for RealPlayer is well known on this blog. However it appears that my hatred is not shared by net users. According to Computer Buyer, 2 million people a day are downloading the POS known as RealPlayer and now it seems Google's done a deal with Rob Glaser. Well done Google.
In better news, Google has released a Picasa Web Albums plug-in for iPhoto. Fraser Speirs, developer of FlickrExport for iPhoto has a brief, though interesting, post on the history of Google's plans. I'm fortunate enough to have been either accepted, or invited to pretty much every Google beta. I'm going to check it out now, however as it stands, I won't be leaving Flickr and it's unlikely I ever will completely no matter how good the likes of Zooomr get.
In better news, Google has released a Picasa Web Albums plug-in for iPhoto. Fraser Speirs, developer of FlickrExport for iPhoto has a brief, though interesting, post on the history of Google's plans. I'm fortunate enough to have been either accepted, or invited to pretty much every Google beta. I'm going to check it out now, however as it stands, I won't be leaving Flickr and it's unlikely I ever will completely no matter how good the likes of Zooomr get.
Sibelius bought by Avid
Tuesday 01 August 2006 Filed in: Technology
I'm a very happy owner of the Sibelius music notation software - it's arguably the world's best selling and most renowned composition tool (used for Harry Potter, Narnia and more) - and it's been announced that Avid has acquired Sibelius to place it in their DigiDesign audio division. For those of you who don't know, Sibelius is a British company started in 1993 in Cambridge. The price paid? A cool $23 million. The guys behind Sibelius are clearly very happy (rich) guys now, and I'm sure this means that Sibelius will continue to get even better in the future. Oh the possibilities of Pro Tools and Sibelius 5+!
WWDC Predictions
Tuesday 01 August 2006 Filed in: Apple
Others are starting to put theirs online, so I shall too!
Software:
Mac OS X Leopard / 10.5:- Features & Rough Ship Date (well before Vista)
Release update to Tiger (possibly last?)
Hardware:
Mac Pros using Intel Chips (duh)
Cinema Displays with Built-in iSight
Other Assorted Possibilities
Apple iPhone Announcement - Not necessarily the hardware, but more of a 'Platform' being announced for developers with 'test' devices being available 'shortly'
Whatever comes at WWDC, I'll be unimpressed should Apple decide to rejuvenate the iPod lineup. iPods are not for WWDC - leave them til September Steve so I can watch the Keynote at Apple Expo Paris ;-)
Software:
Mac OS X Leopard / 10.5:- Features & Rough Ship Date (well before Vista)
Release update to Tiger (possibly last?)
Hardware:
Mac Pros using Intel Chips (duh)
Cinema Displays with Built-in iSight
Other Assorted Possibilities
Apple iPhone Announcement - Not necessarily the hardware, but more of a 'Platform' being announced for developers with 'test' devices being available 'shortly'
Whatever comes at WWDC, I'll be unimpressed should Apple decide to rejuvenate the iPod lineup. iPods are not for WWDC - leave them til September Steve so I can watch the Keynote at Apple Expo Paris ;-)
Steve Jobs' Secret Diary
Tuesday 01 August 2006 Filed in: Amusing Forwards
This one's been going around the Apple web a few days now, however the posts on the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs Aged 51 1/2 have just caused me to collapse with laughter. A little blunt at times, it's certainly a funny read. Comments such as '.Mac is having some issues.... and you wonder why I'm using Blogger' and more are all found here. I'd highly recommend you put it into your RSS reader!