The Talk Show: Live From WWDC
7:00pm Tuesday  •  California Theatre
Tickets Available  •  Fun Will Be Had

Linked List: September 28, 2006

Thursday, 28 September 2006

Punditry 101: When in Doubt, Ask a Stupid Question 

Hadley Stern asks the following stupid question:

If you were on a desert island and you could only take the following two machines:

(1) A MacPro [sic] with all apps installed with no internet connection

or

(2) A Windows box with an internet connection, Firefox, IM, etc.

And then takes the fact that even die-hard Mac users would choose #2 as proof that “the operating system doesn’t matter anymore”.

That’s like offering someone the choice between a BMW with no gas tank and a Kia with one, and declaring that “the quality of your car doesn’t matter anymore” when people choose the Kia because it’ll actually work.

FastScripts 2.3 

Nice update to Daniel Jalkut’s excellent replacement for Apple’s system-wide scripts menu. $15 for the full version, free for the lite version. Highly recommended.

MDJ on Apple’s ‘Cease and Desist’ Request to Podcast Ready 

Matt Deatherage figured out what’s going on after reading the full text of Apple’s cease-and-desist letter — it’s not because Podcast Ready was simply using the word “podcast”, it’s because Podcast Ready was attempting to file for their own trademarks on “podcast ready” and “myPod”:

Apple hasn’t said word one about tens of thousands of people using the term “podcast,” despite Apple’s “iPod” trademark and its claim on “Pod” as a portable audio player trademark as well. Apple took action against Podcast Ready because the firm, formerly known as Infostructure Solutions, was attempting to trademark the terms “Podcast Ready” and “MyPodder.” That would mean that other companies who wanted to use the term “podcast ready” would have to license it from Infostructure Solutions, even though the term is obviously and admittedly based on Apple’s “iPod” trademark. Apple cannot allow companies to register a variant on “myPod” as a trademark if it’s defending its own “iPod” trademark.

Movable Type’s Shitty Export Format 

Tom Sherman takes Six Apart to task for the fact that, if you use the “entry_basename” field for customizing entries’ permalink URLs, this field doesn’t get exported or imported — and thus your URLs will all break if you use the Import/Export feature to change web hosts; this, despite the fact that whole point of the entry_basename field is to keep your URLs from breaking when you change a post’s title.

You don’t want to get me started on just how shitty MT’s Import/Export feature are. (E.g. any entry that contains the strings “\n-----\n” (five dashes on a line by themselves) or “\n--------\n” (eight dashes) can’t be exported and re-imported, because those strings are the export format’s field and entry separators. I.e. MT doesn’t escape those strings when they occur with an entry.)

In a nut: You can’t trust Movable Type to import its own export format.

Boom! 

And, boom.

(Via Garrett Murray via AIM.)

Let the Parsing Begin 

The Macalope takes a look at the latest from George Ou’s “legal professional” friend David Burke. Definitely worth checking out this comment on George Ou’s weblog, too.

Movable Type 3.33 

“Mandatory” security fix update.

Microsoft ‘Points’ Currency 

Candace Lombardi, reporting for CNet on today’s Zune details:

There will also be the option of purchasing individual songs through a system called Microsoft Points. The new Microsoft cash system will work by adding money to an account, as with a prepaid phone card. Points will then be deducted from the account with each purchase. A single song will cost 79 points, “the equivalent of 99 cents,” according to a spokesman for Microsoft.

So they’re creating their own currency? This seems crazy to me.

Update: Apparently they already use this crazy Points currency for Xbox Live stuff. I still say it’s a stupid idea — they obviously hold their customers in contempt, thinking that they’re stupid enough to think that 79 points is “less than” 99 cents even if it costs 99 cents to buy 79 points.

Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner 

Interesting: TidBITS expands their Take Control e-book line outside the computer nerd niche. See also: Sam Sellers’s Take Control of Booking a Cheap Airline Ticket.

NYPost.com Redesigns 

Gaudy, but appropriately so. Well done. (Via Khoi Vinh.)

Strange Medium 

Dave Hyatt on fixed-width font sizing in web browsers:

The answer, as usual with Web browsers, is pretty interesting (which is browser developer-speak for “insanely confusing”).

Cha-Ching 0.1 

Still-in-beta super simple money management app. $15 while in beta, $25 once it hits 1.0. (Via Jason Fried.)

Zune to Debut at $250 on November 14 

Same price as Apple’s 30 GB iPod. The subscription service costs $15 a month. Paul Thurrott says:

This has the makings of a disaster. $14.99 a month is too much for a subscription service. The Zune is incompatible with both iTunes and every single WMA-based service on the planet. What the heck are these people thinking?

What I don’t understand is why Microsoft is claiming they expect to lose money on these first-generation Zunes. Apple’s turning a nice profit on the iPod — the Zune has a slightly bigger screen and Wi-Fi and they have to sell it at a loss?

The Macalope on Think Secret’s New ‘Notes’ Weblog 

Snap!

The Bad: Why You Shouldn’t Buy iTunes Shows or Movies 

And seven very good reasons why you shouldn’t.

The Good: Why You Should Buy iTunes Shows and Movies 

Brad Choate offers seven good reasons for buying music and video from iTunes.

Microsoft Messenger 6.0 

Microsoft’s first universal binary; now includes support for chatting with Yahoo chat users.

‘iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It’ 

Steve Wozniak’s autobiography is out; order it from Amazon and make me rich.