Category: Thoughts

  • Waiting on the WordPress 2.1 update

    I always say wait on upgrades to key software and the newest version of WordPress is no exception. Let somebody else work the kinks out while I keep getting work done. I’ll get the same new gee-whiz features a week or two later while avoiding all the disasters and head aches suffered by the early…

  • Shifting to Interarchy for online backup at S3

    Well, Jungledisk has driven me bananas for the last time. As I blogged back in October and December, I have been messing around with using Jungledisk as a front end to Amazon’s insanely cheap online storage services, S3. Want to save 20 gigabytes of photo and music files? It’s just $3 a month, plus a…

  • Google hears my long-tail e-book plea

    Back in October, when Sony’s new and fairly horrific $350 e-book reader gadget came out, I blasted the company — and some of the people who reviewed the reader — for completely misunderstanding the need for such a product. We don’t need to carry around 87 different best-sellers in an electronic format that’s inferior to…

  • In-depth review of updated Nokia web pad raves

    (Updated 1/25 with additional review) Mike Arrington’s little blog neighborhood is growing, as I noticed today that in addition to the gadget-focused blog added back in the summer (CrunchGear) and his original Web 2.0-ish site (TechCrunch), there’s now one about mobile stuff, too. It’s named — wait for it — MobileCrunch. In any event, blogger…

  • Tags aren’t categories and vice versa

    Begin rant: One thing that annoys me about the otherwise fabulous WordPress software that runs this blog relates to categories and tags. Categories, which run along the side of most blogs (look to the right), tell you about general topics a blogger has written about that might be of interest. Sort of somewhere between an…

  • WriteRoom getting better

    Version 2.0 of the retro word processor WriteRoom is out today (tip o’ the cap to MacMinute.com) with some nifty new features. I’ve been messing around with the initial release because it helps me to concentrate on writing and avoid getting sucked in to answering email or making new iTunes playlists or anything else. Essentially,…

  • Phew, that’s a mighty back up

    The year is rapidly drawing to a close, prompting the usual rush to get those last tax deductions in order, clean out the closets and, of course, update my off-site back up. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a thing about backups after having experienced hefty data losses several times, including the time when my…

  • Belkin’s nifty iPod recorder — finally

    Seems like its been since, oh, forever, that I’ve been looking for a voice recorder to attach to my fifth-generation iPod but its only been a year. When last we checked in on the wait in March, there were two contenders: XtremeMac’s MicroMemo (which looked cool but was kind of pricey) and Griffin Technology’s iTalk…

  • Short-tailed Sony reader needs a much longer one

    Sony’s new e-book Reader certainly seems like a marvel of technology but it’s also an example of a company forgetting to ask the most basic question of new product development: what is the customer benefit over existing products? With a nod to Chris Anderson and his much discussed long tail thesis, the real direction for…

  • About time, Starbucks and iTunes

    Something like 20 years ago, I first encountered Hear Music as a catalog of cool albums selected by some people with taste like mine. They may have pioneered the idea of getting recommendations from favorite artists. It was a great way to learn about old stuff like the blues and jazz, too. But like many…